The Fool on Melancholy Hill
by TheUglyOne
Summary: But I just have to tell you that I love you so much these days. Slash warning.
1. Let Me Take You Down

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

"You're leaving." It was an already acknowledged fact, but it hung in the air like a question, a plea. Her cobalt eyes looked into his grey ones with their usual who-cares indifference, but there was something else there, too, something strange, unusual.

He tried to pass the moment by creating a diversion, sliding a rubber band off his wrist and using it to tie his hair back into a loose, low ponytail, but she wasn't having it. She kept looking at him, never stopped staring into his eyes even when he dropped his gaze, stared at his shoes and the dying grass beneath them.

He let out a breath, soft and anxious, and replied with a simple, "Yeah."

She swallowed hard, tried to force all of the turmoil she felt down her throat, tried to shove it down into her stomach where it could be destroyed by acid. The air was warm and soothing, but it seemed to bite her arms like a brutal winter wind. She ran her hands up and down them, but the bite was still there.

"You don't understand," he tried to say, but he knew the second it left his mouth that it was false. She understood. She _always _understood. They both felt betrayed by that, by the brutal mutual understanding of what was happening.

"You know I do," she replied coldly. "I never expected you to be so typical. Leaving the small town to be with the pretty girl and all. I have to say, I expected more of you, Morgan." She said his name in an effort to wound, but it only sounded endearing, a term of affection, a declaration of love shouted to the heavens.

"I love her," he insisted.

She shook her head. "You don't."

"I do," he insisted, "She's my world. Everything I've ever been looking for, I found in her. Sure, she's not perfect, but I can live with her flaws. I can love them. I love her. I can't let her go. I can't! You have to understand that!"

"No, Morgan, you _don't _love her. You don't even know what love is."

"What about you? Are you saying you do? You don't."

Her eyes seemed to burst into flame, her mouth opening in a wordless cry before she finally snapped, "As a matter of fact, I do. I love _you._"

He shook his head. "No. You can't just say that to make me stay. You can't make me choose. I love _her_. In a way I could never love you. I'm sorry, Pretty Rita, but you're just…you're not that. You're not what she is."

"Fine," she muttered, and finally dropped her gaze, staring down at her bare feet, looking so small and vulnerable next to his much larger, Converse-clad feet. Her head was spinning. This had more power to send her mind reeling than any amount of pills she'd ever swallowed. Her sight began to get blurry and her face felt suddenly warm and damp. She thought these were signs of fatigue before she realized with a start that she was crying.

"Please, don't do this to yourself," he pleaded, and then, with a sigh, he pulled her close in a tight hug. Her arms went around his waist, loose at first, then tightening until she found herself clinging to him with the vain notion that if she just held onto him tight enough, he wouldn't leave.

But he soon let her go, and, by instinct, she let him go, too, looking up at him with a broken expression he couldn't ever recall seeing on her.

"I'm not going away forever. This isn't death. There are phones. There's the internet. We'll see each other again," he insisted, and, despite herself, she nodded gently.

"Goodbye," she whispered. He wiped a tear from her cheek and then, as an afterthought, pressed his lips to her forehead softly. She breathed him in and then, with her heart in her throat, watched him go.

/

2 Years Later

/

He never used to absolutely _despise _waking up in the morning.

Before, waking up wasn't that much different than just fading into another dream. Warm, relaxing, gentle. A nice, even fog surrounding him to guide him into reality and sticking around just in case he needed to go back again.

Not this. This was a cruel jolt, like being suddenly submerged in ice water, like abruptly falling off a steep cliff. It was a sharp, painful shift from comfortable dream-land to harsh, cruel reality.

Letting out a soft, almost fully stifled groan, he rubbed his eye with a fist and inhaled sharply as the pressure on his eye caused an eruption of pain that he likened to what it would feel like to have his skull smashed with a hammer. He squeezed his eyes closed and begged for sleep to return.

It didn't.

The pain gradually ebbed away to a tolerable level, however, and he slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position, surveying his surroundings. Wires all over the floor. Pipes all along the ceiling. Sickly orange walls. Ink sketches on yellowing paper. Bucket of who-knows-what. Boating magazine. Blueprints he couldn't begin to understand. Spider-Man statue. Old record player.

Green-skinned demon leaning against the far wall and staring at him impatiently.

"Murdoc!" he gasped. "W-what are you doing here?"

Murdoc rolled his mismatched eyes and shrugged. "Who knows?" he callously replied, lethargy heavy in his tone. "Maybe I just wanted to see my favorite little dullard."

"Yeah, alright," 2-D cautiously agreed, eyes darting nervously to the closed purple curtains as though weighing which being was more frightening. "Eh…where's…?"

Murdoc presumably raised his eyebrows, though it was hard to tell through the heavy fringe of grey-tinted black hair that stopped just short of falling into his eyes. "Eh?" Understanding suddenly fell over his features. "Oh, Noodle? Off running a special mission for me."

"S-special mission?" 2-D stammered, eyes once again darting to the curtain-covered window, this time as though pondering jumping out of it. "What kind of…"

Murdoc waved a hand, cutting him off. "Hey, now, I don't get into your private business, now, do I?" 2-D opened his mouth as though to comment, but Murdoc cut him off. "Before you answer that with more of your mind-bogglingstupidity, why don't you listen to this?" The sickly green hand disappeared inside the pocket of his baggy white trousers.

"Aha!" Murdoc announced, tugging out some jumper cables. "Er…no, that's not it…um…" He continued his rummaging tossing a Beanie Baby oyster, a large plastic lobster, some tackle bait, a ball of bright green yarn, and a joystick from an old video game system onto the floor of 2-D's room before finally pulling out a cassette tape.

"There!" Murdoc triumphantly announced, holding it up in the air for a moment before grabbing a small cassette player out from under 2-D's bed (the fact that Murdoc knew what was underneath his bed unnerved 2D greatly) and sitting next to 2-D's feet on the bed. He fumbled with the cassette plaayer, struggling to get it open and then tossing it angrily onto the bed, at which point it promptly popped open.

"Damn infernal caveman contraption…" the green-skinned man muttered bitterly as he pressed the tape into it. A horrible, deafeningly loud screeching noise came from its speakers. Murdoc screamed obscenities at the device until 2-D nervously took it from his hands, opening it and turning the tape the other way around, at which point the screeching stopped and was replaced by a calmly speaking male voice, a bit fuzzy due to poor recording equipment.

"Could've done it if you just would've given me time…" Murdoc grumbled, and then brightened a bit as the male voice continued speaking. "Yeah, now, listen closely to this, faceache, and tell me what you think."

"…_local band 'Tainted Class' performing live in our studio. What was the name of the song you said you were going to play for us, there, sweetheart?" The male voice queried._

A voice, so deep that, if it weren't for the particularly feminine lift, it could easily be mistaken as masculine, and rather heavily slurred, replied with a short string of complete gibberish.

"What'd she say, Muds?" 2-D queried, but Murdoc shook his head quickly.

A strange, discordant tune was played on a bass, shortly followed by someone rapping words that were either in a foreign language or completely indistinguishable, yet strangely familiar.

"You getting the picture yet, there, dullard?" Murdoc demanded.

"I can't even tell what he's saying," 2-D admitted.

Murdoc growled under his breath and grumbled, "Keep listening, then."

The gibberish rap continued, sounding more and more bizarre by the second. It took a few seconds, but something clicked in the taller man's head.

"I've heard this before!" 2-D announced. "Only…it was…different." He couldn't explain quite properly what he meant, but he managed to add, "It wasn't quite like this."

Murdoc grinned, nodding, egging 2D on. "Now you're getting it. Listen here."

A soft soprano sang a distantly melancholic melody. Each syllable was pronounced deliberately and clearly, but the words still didn't make a lick of sense, at least, not to someone who spoke standard English.

It took a moment, but then 2-D gasped, "It's backwards! They're singing the song _backwards!"_

Murdoc slammed his fist down, causing 2-D to jump. "Not _the _song! _Our _song!"

"Ours?" 2-D replied, blinking uncertainly.

Murdoc growled. "Yes! Their drummer, the little sod, he calls me up on my _personal line_ and wants to know if his band can do a live cover of Feel Good Inc."

2-D raised his eyebrows. "What'd you say?"

"I said 'no', of course! I don't want the one of our songs being played by some pug-nosed hippie brat! So he says fine, he won't do it, and I figure the matter's been settled. Then he asks if I'll give the radio show a listen. The nerve!"

"So you didn't listen to it?" 2-D gathered.

Murdoc rolled his eyes. "Of _course _I listened to it! And at first I'm thinking, this kid's insane, he's playing pure gibberish! But it was familiar gibberish, I knew that much right from the start, and when his little girlfriend started singing the chorus, I knew straight away! The little sod had the nerve to go against my word and sing the song _backwards!_ Like he thought I wouldn't recognize it! But I _did!"_

Murdoc's eyes suddenly took on a dangerous shine. 2-D cringed. Whenever that particular shine got into his bandmate's mismatched eyes, there was trouble ahead.

A leer spread across Murdoc's face as he growled out, "Do you know what I'm going to do to that little sod?"

2-D gulped. "Beat him to a bloody pulp? Run him over with Stylo? Sic the android on him?"

Murdoc let out a disturbing cackle. "Hell no! I'm going to take his little girlfriend and have her be a guest on our album! That'll show _him _what happens when he messes with _Murdoc Faust Niccals! _Ha-ha-ha!"

The ever-blank onyx orbs blinked slowly, uncomprehendingly. "How does that work?"

Murdoc rolled his eyes. "Clearly you don't understand the workings of a true evil mastermind, dullard, and I don't particularly feel like explaining it to you ten times until you get it."

Once again, 2-D opened his mouth to protest, but Murdoc cut him off, "Either way, I've got to go get the broad, so you'll be staying here by yourself for a couple of days."

"Y-you're leaving me here…alone?" the blunette gasped, his already quite round eyes growing even larger and rounder in shock.

"Not really. I've still got him watching you," Murdoc jerked a thumb in the direction of the window and 2-D flinched, "so I highly doubt you'll even have the bollocks to leave this room."

"No!" 2-D cried, leaping off the bed so suddenly that Murdoc was genuinely startled. "You can't do that! What if the window cracks? What if I run out of oxygen? _What if that damned giant fish decides to eat me?"_

Murdoc was about to counter with some snide comment, but was caught off guard when 2-D suddenly gasped, dropping to his knees and clutching his head. The sudden movement combined with the stress from his fear had caused another, more severe eruption of pain – a full-on migraine. The room went in and out of focus. He was certain he was going to throw up but he couldn't quite recall where his mouth was.

Murdoc's eyes darted nervously from the man on the floor to the door a few feet away from him. His mind fought a brutal battle over whether to tend to his bandmate's needs, which appeared to be the right thing to do, or leave him to figure it out for himself, as was in character for him.

_Well, Murdoc decided, I can't lose my lead singer, can I? I'll do it for the band! …besides, I am the one who stole his headache pills…no! No! I'm doing it for the band! The band, damn it!_

Shaking his head to clear his mind, Murdoc looked down at the lanky singer. Murdoc had no idea what to do for someone who was having a trauma-induced migraine, but he was pretty sure you weren't supposed to leave them curled up in a fetal position on the floor, so he scooped the taller, skinnier man up into his arms and carried him back to the bed. _Satan, _Murdoc mused, _is it healthy for someone to be this light? _By instinct, the blunette draped his arm over the bassist's neck. Murdoc nearly dropped him, startled by the sudden skin-on-skin contact after being staved off it for so long, but managed to regain his composure just in time and get him to the bed safely. He watched as the singer slowly came out of his pain-induced stupor with much groaning and whimpering.

"Geez, if it means _that _much to ya, you can have free run of the island," Murdoc stated without really thinking about it.

A heartbreaking, dazed smile came across the singer's pretty face. "Really? Oh, thank you, Muds!" He made to get up, presumably to hug the bassist, but Murdoc pushed him back down.

"Hey, now, don't go giving yourself another migraine. And by 'free run', I mean anywhere that's _not _my room. Or my secret lair. Or my study, for that matter," Murdoc insisted, quickly returning to his cold mode of operation. "Oh yeah," he added as an afterthought, "and I'm not telling the whale to completely sod off just yet, so don't try anything funny, got it?"

2-D gulped and nodded, trembling slightly.

"Good. And you'd better be ready to record a shitload of new tracks when I get back, or that whale's going to be having blue-headed pretty boy singer for an afternoon snack." Murdoc smirked in satisfaction as a look of horror came across the dullard's face and left the room, glancing over his shoulder to see that 2-D had rolled over to face the wall and either fallen asleep or passed out, judging by the way his shoulders moved with his deep, even breathing.

"Be back soon, sweetie, so don't miss me too much," the green-skinned demon muttered nearly inaudibly under his breath, and then chuckled softly to himself as he entered the lift.

**Ending Thoughts: **Yep, that's right – this one has an OC in it. *gasp!* After reading at least a dozen attempts to write a decent OC story (or, at least, that's what I assume was going on) that failed miserably at creating a good OC (i.e. a non-Mary Sue), I decided that I was up to the challenge.

Pretty Rita is my personal attempt at OC creation, and, thus far, I think she's actually a decently well-rounded character. I've got a character profile for her somewhere in my files, and I quite like it. However, if you see problems with her (y'know, other than her being an OC), please let me know so I can fix them. I won't try denying them or anything. I'm not vain enough to think I can't make mistakes.

I think Murdoc is a bit OOC here, but considering the fact that he definitely seems to be putting up a front in public appearances and interviews, nobody really knows how he acts when cameras and microphones aren't pointed at him, so honestly, practically any characterization of Muds is fair game.

The title, in case you were wondering, is a mash-up of a Beatles song ('Fool on the Hill') and a Gorillaz song ('On Melancholy Hill'). Why? Well, I feel 'Fool on the Hill' describes our friend 2D quite nicely. (And no, that's not an insult – go listen to the song. The 'fool' on the hill is actually the smart one, just nobody bothers to listen to him long enough to figure it out.) But I noticed that there was a trend in Gorillaz fic of naming fics after Gorillaz songs and lyrics, so I threw 'Melancholy' in there to fully make the connection.

(By the way, in case you're actually convoluted enough to believe otherwise, **I do not own the Beatles**, either. Duh.)

**EDIT: **So, apparently my page-breaks didn't come through. I've now replaced them with slashes, so hopefully they're better now.


	2. Cause I'm Going To Strawberry Fields

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

Her name was Pretty Rita, and dear lord, it was exactly as if her mother were terribly malicious and saw that her infant daughter would grow up to have that name be _horridly _ironic. Something that perfectly awful just had to be intentional.

It was hard to pick out exactly _what _made Pretty Rita ugly. She had no facial deformities, no hair above her upper lip, no unibrow. She wasn't hideously obese, she didn't dress particularly atrociously, she didn't even have glasses or braces. In fact, just in description, Pretty Rita sounded relatively _attractive._

But in actuality, Pretty Rita was unmistakably ugly. A textbook example of unattractiveness. As one particularly kind child back in the early days of grade school so nicely pointed out, it was that her features just didn't quite match up. More specifically, it looked as though someone had spun a wheel to pick them out at random and simply tossed them together in a grotesque collage without giving a damn if it looked good or not.

Oh, and believe me when I inform you that it does _not _look good.

Her hair was a very peculiar color. It could most easily be identified as blonde, but it was the most bizarre shade of blonde most had ever seen. It had a particular _dusty _appearance to it, like a Barbie doll left in an attic for years upon years, and, in the right light, even had a bit of a sickly greenish hue.

This alone was undesirable, but paired with her skin, it looked outright _wrong, _like a tragic hairstyling mistake or a horrific tanning bed incident had recently occurred. Her skin was tan with a quite deathly grayish pallor to it, and no matter how much sunlight she received, it never bronzed or browned or even reddened – it stayed the exact same color.

And as if her hair and skin tones looking as though they were fighting a brutal war against each other weren't enough, someone had the brilliant idea of endowing this girl with bright china-blue eyes. If you're picturing this, I'm fairly certain you must've just winced, because with her hair looking dusty and her skin having that horrible pallor to it, her bright irises stuck out like a sore thumb. And as if they weren't conspicuous enough, they were oddly large, making her look like an anime character that had encountered an error in printing, mutating the colors.

As you can clearly see, 'Pretty' Rita was quite the misnomer. And Pretty Rita herself? She was quite painfully aware of this fact, and as she peered into the bathroom mirror, she had a brief moment of insecurity, a minor second where she was saddened by her unsightly appearance, angry at the wordplay of a name.

Then she popped open a little black plastic film canister with a clear plastic lid, swallowed two green-and-white capsules, and smiled as a tingly, numbing sensation swept over her, settling happily in her cranium.

The insecurity swept away like dry leaves in a harsh wind, leaving her disoriented and perfectly happy.

/

It was brutally hot at midday. He was firmly under the impression that you could get a sunburn while running out to shoo Seagull and Pelican off the railing (futile, really, they always came right back), which took about two minutes, tops.

Unfortunately, Murdoc found out that it was equally but oppositely brutal at midnight. He stood on the dock in long pants and a sweatshirt and shivered violently. It didn't seem like air should be able to cool that fast; he'd nearly died of heat exhaustion a mere six hours ago while running up to the lighthouse to fetch another bottle of rum.

Since his teeth were chattering anyway, he decided to at least make his mouth form words as though making an excuse for moving it. He muttered to himself, complaining about the cold, complaining about his increasing sobriety, complaining about complaining so much.

Finally, the low purr of a Jet Ski motor could be heard faintly, and as it got louder, Murdoc grew happier. It pulled up next to him on the dock and the lighthouse illuminated the slender figure of Noodle-Bot. It also illuminated that she was dressed in a bathing suit top (not a bikini top, no, that was far too soft for her – a sporty black thing that looked more like a cut-off Spandex wife beater than anything else) and bright white shorts that were short enough to cause a riot. She wasn't even shivering.

Curse her indifference to temperature.

She leapt up onto the dock gracefully – a nearly four-foot leap – and roughly pulled a black elastic hair tie out of her seriously tangled blue-black locks, tossing her head rather violently to get the strands to fall back into place before holding out a pocket-sized black notebook.

"I have located the girl," she announced in that painfully familiar but distinctly automated voice.

Murdoc flipped through the notebook. The words were all written in perfectly neat print – he seriously hoped that nobody had glimpsed them; the flawlessness of it would be quite conspicuous – and even in the dim light, he could clearly make them out.

"Pretty Rita?" Murdoc stated in disbelief. "Satan, what's gotten into these parents' heads? Is this supposed to be some veiled Beatles reference or something?"

"Assumedly," Noodle-Bot stated, nodding her head once, jerkily.

"Not vey clever," Murdoc grumbled. "Let's see…Wooder Mills, Massachusetts. It'll take a while to get _there…_though Stylo could speed things up a bit, I suppose. Massachusetts…that borders an ocean, right?"

"The Atlantic Ocean is to its east. Rhode Island and Connecticut are to the south, New York to its west, Verm-"

Murdoc waved his hands in frustration. "Alright, alright! I didn't ask for a history lesson!"

"In actuality, the information I gave you would fall under the topic of 'geography' in most …" At the look Murdoc gave her, Noodle-Bot fell silent.

Murdoc pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, then noted, "Well, if we want to get her here in time for her to appear on P-Sides, we'd better head out soon."

"For maximum efficiency, we should depart before four o'clock, assuming you want to begin recording by the following Tuesday at fourteen o'clock. Of course, that's factoring in about six hours of rest time upon arrival and two hours of traffic backup, so it's really just a rough estimate."

Murdoc blinked at her. "So we should leave soon, then?"

"Yes." There was the faintest hint of annoyed amusement in her voice. Murdoc chose to overlook it.

"Alright, then. Get your bags packed, love, we leave in two hours."

"Yes, Murdoc. Shall I secure the captive 2D?"

Murdoc hoped that her enhanced vision didn't mean that she could see the faint pink that came over his cheeks in the darkness. "Er, no, actually, that's, um…that's been taken care of."

"I believe I should double-check for flaws." The suspicion in her voice was a bit too much to overlook, and Murdoc found himself becoming defensive.

"Look, now, love, I'm in charge of this place, and if I want to let my captives run free, then I will!"

He could feel her glaring at him even in the darkness, but the Obey My Every Command chip he'd put in her stopped her from protesting any further.

But that certainly didn't mean she agreed with him, and he knew that all too well.

/

Most kids are exaggerating when they claim there's nothing to eat in the house.

Pretty Rita, however, was speaking literally. After (once again) clearing the cabinets and fridge out of all expired foods (which was rather hard on the stomach), there was nothing to make a meal out of.

She walked out of the kitchen and approached the woman lying on the sofa. "Did you go grocery shopping this week?"

She already knew she hadn't.

The woman didn't answer. She hadn't expected her to.

After standing there for a few minutes watching the woman stare blankly at a TV set (they had lost cable months ago – the only thing on TV was static), she returned to the kitchen and grabbed a mostly-eaten bag of chocolate chips.

Exquisite cuisine.

Flopping down on her bed, she tugged her iPod out of her pocket. It was the most expensive thing she owned – the thing had cost more than their house had – and she never let it out of her sight for a second. It had taken two full years of saving all the money that didn't go toward food and drugs to buy it, and thus far, it was very, _very _worth it.

System of a Down. 'Lonely Day.'

She tugged the black film canister out of her other pocket and dry-swallowed three pills, breathing the way she was taught to get the stuff to work faster. One deep breath in, three shallow breaths out. Repeat.

Serj told her such a lonely day shouldn't exist, and with a drowsy smile on her face, she whispered, "It doesn't. I'm not lonely."

And she didn't think about a boy with soft brown hair and eyes the color of storm clouds, not even for a moment.

**Final Thoughts:** I intended for this to be put up two or three days ago, but I kept wanting to add another portion to it. Eventually, though, I decided this was good enough to post, so here ya go – new chapter. The portion I was planning will (most likely) be at the beginning of the Chapter 3.

Special thanks to **TheyUsed2D** for being my first and (thus far) only reviewer.

**I do not own the Beatles**, whose song title ('The Fool on the Hill') was used for the title and whose lyrics (to 'Strawberry Fields Forever') are being used for the chapter titles, and **I do not own System of a Down**, who was mentioned within the chapter.

If there's anyone else reading this, please leave me a review – I would really, really appreciate some input on whether this story is working out or not.

Thanks for reading!

**-TheUglyOne**

**EDIT: **Alright, so page-breaks have been replaced by slashes. That's the best I can do for now, but hey, at least you know when the scene changes.

Thank you ever so much to **HoloXam** for alerting me to this problem.


	3. Nothing Is Real

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

He could hear the music before the lift even reached the bottom floor – quite impressive, considering the lift was airtight (had to be, with the frequency that the thing got flooded). Once the lift opened, he could feel the beat pulsing in his chest. He got ready to shout at the dullard for blasting crappy pop music loud enough to cause disruptions in the ocean outside the porthole, but the shout died in his throat when he saw that his captive was fast asleep, sprawled out on the bed.

How in Satan's name he managed sleep with his music _that loud, _he hadn't the slightest idea.

"_Take your life to the ultimate high / you can follow my way / don't look back to the others now / you'll be doing ok…"_

Murdoc began searching for the source of the music. The vintage record player didn't even have a record put in – he hadn't thought that this kind of music was available on record, but it was worth a shot – and the stereo was lying face-down on the floor from when Murdoc had fallen into the stand it'd been sitting on and tipped the whole thing over a few weeks ago.

He finally tracked it down – there was an iPod (an old one, 3rd generation Nano, he was guessing, but it looked a bit different, maybe it was custom?) sitting on 2D's stomach, and it was plugged into a pair of speakers on the far side of the bed which were resting near his shoulder.

Which only added to the question of _how _in the _world _the singer had fallen asleep with that noise going on not six inches from his head.

Murdoc tugged the cord out of the iPod, which caused a soft '_pop!_' to sound in the speakers before the room went silent (well, other than the constant sound of waves crashing overhead). He turned the iPod off and set it down on a shelf near 2D's bed. He was reaching for the speakers when he happened to glance at the singer's sleeping face.

He caught his breath when he realized that there was no denying it - the singer looked positively _radiant _while asleep.

The hat he had taken to wearing lately was hung unceremoniously on the bedpost, so his soft-looking azure spikes fell unhindered along the pillow, a few tumbling into the man's face. His eyelids, faintly purple with those ever-present bruises, were closed demurely, twitching every once in a while, implying that the singer was dreaming. Adding further to this idea was the slight pink flush on his cheeks and the fact that his breath grew quicker every now and again, only to even back out. His full, rose-colored lips were slightly parted, revealing the large gap where his two front teeth had once been. One arm dangled off the bed, fingertips brushing the floor, while the other rested on his lower stomach, a few inches above his waistband.

He was used to the singer being known as a pretty boy – in fact, Murdoc was prone to use that against him on several occasions – but he was certainly not used to thinking of the younger man as _beautiful._

Murdoc pushed a few blue strands off the singer's cheeks and the blunette gasped in his sleep, making Murdoc's heart skip a beat as he feared he was waking up. He quickly pulled his hand back, afraid that he had been caught, but 2D just made a little humming noise in his throat and sighed softly in slumber.

The scare, however, was enough to bring Murdoc back down to Earth – what the bloody hell was he _doing? _This certainly was _not _how captors treated their captives, not good ones, anyway. Maybe the ones in those movies that Murdoc was fond of – but then the captive was some well-endowed young woman with big doe eyes, which, in Murdoc's mind, made it acceptable to be a little soft. But 2D was most certainly _not_ a big-breasted female; he was a ridiculously skinny _male_ that Murdoc definitely shouldn't be attracted to.

And he wasn't. He _wasn't._ Certainly not.

2D whimpered softly in his sleep as though he knew he was being rejected, and Murdoc quickly scanned the room, located and grabbed the rope (which he'd originally come down here for), and got into the lift before that little twist in his chest could be properly identified.

/

She was already on the beach, leaning against Stylo like something out of a dirty magazine, ankles crossed, elbows against the hood, impatient look on her face. At her feet was a vintage trunk, the brown leather severely faded and worn.

Murdoc wondered where she got it for a moment, but then realized he probably didn't really want to know.

She now wore a tight white t-shirt with sleeves that stopped at her elbows and a pair of camouflage shorts that reached her mid-thighs. On her feet was a pair of shiny leather combat boots that almost came up to her knees with bright white laces.

Thank Satan. He really didn't want to have the You Need to Dress Less Like a Hooker Cause It's Making People Stare talk with her _again – _it had been awkward enough the first time.

She also had put her hair into two messy French braids. He wondered how she accomplished that – he was fairly certain he'd never programmed her with Hairstyling. Ah well. It didn't really matter anyway, really. In fact, it sort of helped with the Real Live Girl persona he was hoping she'd be able to pull off.

"Are you prepared for departure?" she queried.

"Yeah, I guess," Murdoc shrugged, tossing his own massive suitcase (designer, too, he'd only have the best luggage, after all) into the storage compartment in the back of Stylo and hopped into the drivers' seat. She followed suit, shoving her trunk in next to his suitcase and slipping stealthily into the shotgun.

And speaking of shotguns, he happened to glimpse a pistol tucked into her waistband when her shirt rode up as she buckled her seatbelt.

"Er, Noodle, love, you really shouldn't carry concealed weapons – police in the States are a little rough on 14-year-old chicks having pistols shoved into their pants," Murdoc insisted.

Noodle-Bot looked at him coldly, "We have several days of ocean travel before we reach land. I doubt the fish will care if I have a pistol tucked into my shorts." With a dangerous smirk she added, "And the police will have quite the time arresting _me._"

Murdoc swallowed hard at the thought of the carnage _that_ would produce, and decided not to comment any further, instead putting the amphibious vehicle into drive and heading straight into the crashing waves, instinctively holding his breath as the car plunged into the depths of the ocean.

The car was rocked with the waves and plunged dizzily towards the ocean floor before it auto-adjusted into a sub and Murdoc steadied it, pushing it forward.

2D's guard-whale stared at him with one of those massive, sad-looking eyes as he passed, and Murdoc could swear he saw annoyance in those yellowish orbs, bitterness at having been recently told to give its prisoner more freedom.

He pretended he didn't see (which was quite a stretch, considering whales aren't exactly easy to miss) and pushed the car forward so fast that he was thrown back against the seat.

/

There's a saying that goes "You only notice the bad, the good just passes you right by."

He hadn't believed that or, as a matter of fact, any other sayings he'd heard in his lifetime, sometime because he didn't agree with them but most of the time because he didn't understand them.

But he reconsidered that when he was in the middle of walking across his bedroom and he realized that he hadn't noticed yet that he had woken up absolutely pain-free.

The very idea that his morning headache had chosen to forsake him that morning made him stop dead in his tracks.

And then his stomach started doing something strange, and for a minute he thought, "Shit, my stomach's reacting badly to some kind of pill! Someone drugged me!"

Then it hit him: He wasn't sick. Quite the contrary.

He was…well, it was hard to find the right word to describe exactly what was going on, but he would liken it to that feeling he got when he was waiting backstage at the Manchester Opera House and Noodle was tuning her guitar and chattering to Mike in Japanese and Russel was fighting with Murdoc over the last candy apple ("C'mon, lards, you've had like six already!") and he thought, _This is it. This is the night. After this, there's no denying it – we're famous beyond our wildest dreams._

That feeling he got when that girl with those beautiful ringlets the color of milk chocolate who worked the Shoot-Em-Up game at the funfair leaned over the counter and whispered, "I just absolutely _love _rock stars."

The feeling he got when he woke up after a wild party on the tour bus to find himself lying on top of Murdoc on the floor and he didn't move because he was scared that if Murdoc woke up to find them in this…compromising…position, he'd get his face punched in, and then he realized that he didn't really have the urge to move anyway because Murdoc was quite warm and his rhythmic breathing sounded quite nice when your ear was pressed to his chest…

There's a Sesame Street song that goes "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just does not belong" and 2D knew that it had some relevance here, but he was too tired and there were butterflies in his stomach and he opted not to think about that just now and instead tripped over a power cord on his way to the bathroom and took great pride in swearing at it because it was a very nice distraction.

/

**Final Thoughts: **I'm not too proud of this chapter, honestly, although there are some high points to it.

The song that's playing in 2D's room (and has the lyrics in the story) is 'Run With Me' by Jeanette Biedermann, which I heard on a 2D/Murdoc YouTube video today and I personally think is quite fantastic and has a very seductive beat considering the fact that the lyrics aren't really sexual at all.

So, once again, **I don't own the Beatles,** despite the many references to them in here, **I don't own Jeanette Biedermann **or know anything else about her but that 'Run With Me' is an awesome song and she wrote it, oh, and **I also don't own Sesame Street**, which I made a brief reference to in the last paragraph up there.

Thank you again to my two reviewers, **TheyUsed2D **and **HoloXam**.

If you review my story, I'll reply to you with much gratitude and will happily accept all criticism you choose to put on me and do my best to make amends where you see fit. I won't be able to change anything if you don't tell me as I'm not telekinetic, though that would be pretty cool, so please, **if anybody else is out there, leave me a review.** For heaven's sake, if you don't want me to know who you are, I even accept anonymous reviews, so seriously, there's no reason not to.


	4. And Nothing To Get Hungabout

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

Murdoc Niccals awoke to suffer three minor heart attacks in a row.

First, he woke up to find a sea turtle staring at him through the window. The terror faded away when he fully came to terms with where he was – in Stylo, underwater, where sea turtles were commonplace.

Then he realized that waking up meant he had just been _sleeping, _rather than _driving. _He sat up quickly, expecting to find his precious car in ruins on the ocean floor, only to find that he was sitting in the passenger seat, and someone else was driving the car, which was perfectly intact.

This was a comfort until he realized that the person driving the car was a fourteen-year-old (in appearance, at least) android girl who he'd _never programmed to drive._

Cue heart attack number three.

"You can't bloody drive!" he shouted. This was, of course, absurd because she was very clearly driving at that very moment, disproving Murdoc's accusation before it was even said, but Murdoc felt it needed to be said anyway, if only to put his irrational thinking out into the open for evaluation rather than locking it up in his head to gather dust.

Noodle-Bot, for her part, merely ignored him and swerved to avoid an oncoming school of tuna.

"Stupid tuna," she grumbled, "think they rule the whole damn sea."

Murdoc felt like he was in one of those dreams where nothing made sense, and he just sat there gaping at her as she paused to let a family of bull sharks past.

"I downloaded a driver's training video into my memory a while back," she explained, glancing at him for only for a moment before returning to staring out the windshield. There was a hint of amusement in the corners of her mouth and the twinkle of her eyes, a bit of cruel enjoyment of Murdoc's confusion.

"I didn't tell you to do that!" Murdoc exclaimed.

She stared him down with a particularly vicious look in her eyes. "I am fully capable of performing tasks on my own. You should know that, you are the one who gave me that ability."

Murdoc muttered something that sounded a lot like "Big mistake" before unbuckling his seatbelt and ordering, "Pull over, I'm driving now."

Noodle-Bot opened her mouth to protest, and then winced, clapping a hand to the back of her neck and grinding her teeth as she recognized Murdoc's favorite little upgrade – the Obedience chip, the one that gave her a rather painful shock if she tried to defy her creator.

Avoiding Murdoc's eyes, she pulled over and parked the car. She and Murdoc switched seats, and he pulled back into the steady stream of aquatic life.

"What else did you download without my knowledge?" Murdoc demanded after a few moments of vicious silence.

"Nothing of importance," Noodle-Bot replied in a tone that very clearly stated that it would _not _be wise to question her any further. Ordinarily, Murdoc would grow irate and demand answers, and he very much intended to do so, snapping his head around to glare at her…and then he got an eyeful of the cyborg's quite pitiful position. She had pulled her knees up to her chest and was hugging them, staring downward with a mixture of indignity and hurt displayed on her face.

He hadn't programmed her to feel emotions, and of this he was well aware. But she bore resemblance to a vibrant young woman who _did _feel emotions, and quite strongly, too. He could clearly remember her huge, glowing smile that lit up an entire room, and, just as strongly, the fragile, holding-back-tears expression that, he guiltily recalled, usually meant that he had done something that had hurt her yet _again._

Noodle-Bot was trying to convey anger, but when he looked at her, all he saw was that almost-crying fourteen-year-old axe princess whose heart he had carelessly broken too many times to count.

It shook him so bad that he nearly T-boned a dolphin and had to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. As he waited for the now-irate dolphin to go by, he sighed and placed a hand on the android's shoulder.

She looked up at him in confusion and he muttered a guilty, "I'm sorry." He wasn't even sure what he was apologizing for, but it seemed like the proper thing to say nonetheless, the easiest way to take that heart-wrenching expression off the cyborg's face and make this irritating little pinprick of guilt go away.

Utter bafflement came across the cyborg's features. Never _once _had she even heard her creator admit that he was wrong, and now he was _apologizing?_ It definitely didn't seem much like the Murdoc she was used to.

It was a very odd sensation as she felt all of her bitterness melt away with those two simple words, and she found herself saying, "You are forgiven."

The ghost of a smile came across Murdoc's face, and they rode until they reached land in peaceful silence.

/

It was a very good thing that the water heater in the mansion on Plastic Beach was economy-sized, or 2D would have found himself doused in ice water about halfway into his obscenely long shower.

He had spent nearly two and a half hours in the hot water, scrubbing anxiously at his flesh in the hopes that he could somehow wash away that sickening feeling that he was _missing _something, something very, _very _important.

The feeling was still there an hour after getting out of the shower, and his ordinarily very pale skin now had a rather bright pink flush to it from being scrubbed roughly with scalding water and harsh soap.

Now he was walking along the beach, pausing every once in a while to examine one of the many items that had washed ashore. The whole place had a rather horrible stench to it, but he was rather used to that. Kong had been built right next to a landfill, after all, and right on the edge of a graveyard. After living in the constant odor of hot garbage and rotting flesh, there really wasn't a smell in the world that could bother you.

He had rolled up his jeans and gone running into the waves, but that was quite the mistake – the waves had washed up quite a bit of things that one wouldn't much enjoy stepping on, including a broken glass jar that had sliced open the sole of one of his feet. Thankfully, there was an old checkered tablecloth nearby, so he sat down on the overturned remains of a wooden bookshelf and wrapped the cloth tight around his foot to stop the bleeding and to make it possible to limp on rather than hopping on one foot for about a quarter of a mile as he got back to the mansion.

It definitely came in handy to have a nurse for a mother.

With his skin feeling like he'd gotten a nasty sunburn and his foot throbbing and bleeding, he rode the lift up to his room and collapsed on the bed. He would quite like to watch a movie, but he didn't want to get up to put one in. He scanned the room for something else to occupy himself, but everything was positioned so that he'd have to get up to get it.

He swore to himself for a bit longer than completely necessary because he quite liked the sound of his own voice, and then he happened to notice the window.

_Murdoc did supposedly tell the whale to let me be,_ 2D mused, _and I would imagine the view is actually quite nice when it's not obscured by a massive fish of death._

Biting his lip, he pulled the curtains open just a bit, peeking out nervously. Sure enough, there was no 'massive fish of death' in sight. The water had a bit of an odd tint to it that he hadn't noticed when viewing it from land, but other than that, it was actually quite brilliant. He'd never seen such brightly colored fish, and he could swear they were smiling at him when they went past. A shimmering jellyfish swam by, appearing to be swimming to the beat of some unheard music. A grayish squid paused for quite a while just outside his window and appeared to be studying him with the intellect of a higher being.

2D was beginning to see why some people found oceans relaxing when he noticed a large, dark something-or-other swimming off in the distance. At first, he thought it was a submarine, and for a brief moment he was worried. Murdoc insisted that the helicopters were flown by some "dangerous blokes" who "wouldn't think twice about putting a few bullets through the head of some pretty boy singer." He hadn't offered up any more information than that, but that was enough to make him hide whenever the helicopters happen to pass by.

Just as he was preparing to draw the curtains closed and hide until the sub went away, he noticed something peculiar – the sub had an eye. And besides that…was that a fin? It was! What a strange sub! Massive, too, now that it was coming closer, it looked almost like…

2D shrieked (quite effeminately, I might add) and leapt away from the window so quickly and violently that he toppled onto the floor. The whale, presumably to see what the hell was going on, swam up to the window, causing 2D to hyperventilate.

"Go away! Go away!" he screamed, constantly using up what little air he was able to pull in. Eventually, his body grew quite tired of this nonsense and shut down. If his irises could be differentiated from his sclera, it would be apparent that his eyes were slowly rolling back into his head, and then he collapsed in an awkward heap on the floor of his bedroom with one leg still propped up on the bed.

The whale, feeling a bit offended, swam away, and the educated squid returned, looking in through the porthole at the pitiful little floor-heap that was 2D, and wobbled, which could only be assumed as the squid equivalent of shaking one's head in a dissatisfied manner, and waited to see if the lanky singer would come to. When, after twenty minutes, he didn't, the squid decided it wasn't worth sticking around for, and scurried away.

/

**Final Thoughts: **Not too happy with _this _one, either, considering it's more of a filler chapter than anything because I want my favorite line of 'Strawberry Fields Forever' to be the title of the chapter with my favorite scene in it. A bit foolish, I know, but hey, I'm the author of this little story, and if I want to make foolish decisions, I will, damn it!

I'm sorry that these last two chapters have been boring as shit, but the next chapter has the pivotal kidnapping scene in it, and it's planned to be so absolutely _awesome_ that it's the only scene I have planned for the entire chapter. So it'll be worth sticking around for. And I'm going to start writing it right away because I've been waiting since I started this story to do this chapter. So yeah.

**Shameless advert time!** My deviantART is now linked to on my profile, and it has my Pretty Rita drawings on it, so if you're like "what the hell does this chick even look like?", then you should go there. Yeah.

*sigh* Alright then, now for the technical stuff – **I don't own the Beatles **even though the chapter titles are from 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and the title is a reference to 'The Fool on the Hill' and…um…actually, I didn't use anybody else in this chapter as far as I know, so that's it.

And now's everyone's favorite part – where I beg and plead for reviews! I truly thank my two faithful reviewers **TheyUsed2D **and **HoloXam, **and **HikaxKaoxLovies** who reviewed while I was typing this and I therefore am yet to reply to but I will very soon because **I reply to each and every review I get, **even if you've already reviewed before, because **I value your input. **I do. I truly do. And if I get critiqued, I do my best to use it to improve, and **I accept anonymous reviews **so if you don't want me to know who you are, there's always that.


	5. Strawberry Fields Forever

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

She'd never been to a club, but she imagined this was what it was like – lights in the most brilliant, beautiful colors imaginable flashing and pulsing in time with the music, glittering and sparkling like rock candy under a spotlight.

When the music stopped, they fizzled away, and when it started up again, they were even more vibrant than before, amazing enough to take her breath away.

"_Meat eating orchids forgive no one just yet / cut myself on angel hair and baby's breath / broken hymen of your highness / I'm left black / throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back…"_

She'd never had an orgasm, but she imagined this was what it was like – mind spinning in circles, thoughts incoherent, bright lights dancing through her vision, senses all on red alert.

Momentarily, she forgot to breathe, and then she couldn't figure out what was wrong until her lungs acted on reflex and tugged in some air.

She laughed. Whether it was from lack of oxygen, pure ecstasy, or outright insanity, she couldn't be sure, but she laughed until her throat burned and saltwater dripped from her eyes.

And then she gathered all of the voice she had left to join Kurt in shouting, _"Hey! Wait! I've got a new complaint!"_ and fell thoroughly fulfilled from her dusty head to her tingling toes.

/

The bonfires gave the place an eerie glow, and Murdoc felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle as he made his way through the camp. He had insisted that Noodle-Bot leave the pistol in the glove box, but he suddenly felt like he needed it like a toddler needs his security blanket – not to protect him but just so he felt protected.

There was very suddenly a man standing not two inches from Murdoc's face. Murdoc yelped and leapt back so suddenly he very nearly fell over.

The man leaned in close and, in a tone that suggested he was relaying some dark secret of the universe, whispered, "There's a giant over there," and, with a shaking hand, pointed at some distant spot.

Murdoc looked around awkwardly and replied with a very dignified, "Uh…"

The man continued, "I speak no lies. Keep your eyes open, green man. There's trouble afoot. There's _always _trouble afoot when there are giants around."

Murdoc decided it was in his best interest to just agree, "Yep. Always."

Completely dropping the dramatic whisper, the man grinned widely and stated in a casual, relaxed tone, "We're having an awesome bonfire over by Trailer #3. I mean _awesome. _Like, some college chicks just showed up, and it just _all _went up from there, know what I'm saying?"

Murdoc was about to reply when the android grabbed his wrist in an iron grip and hissed, "Stick to the plan, Murdoc. Move along."

Murdoc put on a fake smile and said, "I've got to be on my way now."

Returning to the dramatic whisper, the man hissed, "Keep your eyes open," and disappeared into the smoke.

Murdoc and Noodle-Bot shared a look before silently agreeing not to comment and moving along.

/

The static lines could look like shapes if you looked at them long enough, and in the company of Jack Daniels and the Captain, these shapes spoke beautiful, elegant words that meant absolutely nothing but had humor deep within their cores.

So she laughed and laughed and laughed until she forgot how to, and then she drank and drank and drank until she remembered again and forgot everything else she'd ever known. She drank until perfection.

Murdoc looked at the woman lying on the couch laughing at a screen full of static and wondered if she even saw him. The horrors that could occur in her own home without this woman even noticing flickered through his mind like a macabre slideshow, and it took him a moment to regain enough composure to say, as politely as one who had just broken into someone's home could speak to the homeowner, "I'm looking for Pretty Rita."

The woman blinked, her eyes like watered-down chocolate, and in a voice as beautiful as pigs being slaughtered slurred something incomprehensible.

Murdoc raised his eyebrows, "I'm sorry?"

She slurred something even less understandable and pointed in the general direction of a room separated from the room they were in by a tie-dyed bedsheet draped over a curtain rod.

Murdoc considered thanking her, but decided he didn't want to hear any more mutilated words and continued on without a word.

"Wait," the woman shouted in a tone that was all too clear, "you can't take her. I need her."

Murdoc bit his lip. Noodle-Bot had claimed that the mother wouldn't care or even notice the kidnapping of her daughter. This was a serious dent in the plan.

Hoping he could somehow talk her out of it, he asked, "Why do you say that?"

"Her money. I need her money. I'll die without her money," the woman insisted.

Murdoc grinned, "Money? I can give you money so that you'll never need money again." He tugged out a checkbook and quickly made out a check for $3,000 with a shaking, nervous hand.

"Three thousand? For her?" she gasped as it entered her hands. The very idea that she had managed to read the check completely confounded him, but perhaps money was more than enough to pull this woman out of her drunken stupor.

"Will that do?" Murdoc asked.

"Take her," the woman cried, "Oh, sweet Jesus, take her, she's yours, all yours," and hugged the check to her chest, spilling quite a bit of Captain Morgan onto herself in the process. She began weeping with joy, babbling to herself in that sort of speech only drunk people understood.

Murdoc paused and watched her for a moment. He had never been one who enjoyed seeing happy, typical suburban families, and quite preferred the reality of family disputes. But seeing this woman with alcohol spilled all down her front, hugging the check that signed her daughter away to a stranger and, ironically, weeping quite like a mother who had seen their firstborn child for the very first time, he tasted bile in the back of his throat.

Swallowing the acid, he pushed back the bedsheet and entered the small bedroom. The only light came from between the blinds on the window, putting everything in a very eerie glow. The girl was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling with a diluted smile on her face, humming so softly he could barely hear it. Her face was undoubtedly unattractive, but the music that escaped from her lips seemed to somehow make up for it.

Her gaze fell on him, and he froze, not quite meeting her eyes. It took a good three minutes before her dazed expression turned angry.

"What the hell are you doing in here?" she shouted, tugging the headphones down around her neck and quickly hopping to her feet. "Get out!"

"Noodle!" Murdoc shouted. The sound of a door slamming harshly into drywall signified that Noodle-Bot was on her way.

"Look, I don't care who you are or what you've been doing to my mom, you stay the hell out of my room! You have no right to be in here!" she yelled, and then shoved at him, "Go!"

She wasn't nearly strong enough to even move him slightly, which only seemed to enrage her more. She opened her mouth to scream again but a feminine hand grabbed her by the shoulder and slammed her face-down on the bed. Her muffled shouts kept coming, growing panicked as Noodle-Bot tied up her wrists and ankles with inhuman efficiency.

"Noodle, love, remember, she has to be able to breathe…" Murdoc hissed, growing nervous as Pretty Rita's screaming grew faint. Rolling her eyes, the android carelessly flipped the girl over. She gasped for breath, utter terror in her eyes, her mouth moving in wordless expressions of horror.

There was so much fear there that he almost felt like he was doing her a favor when he slid the needle into her arm, sedating her.

The cyborg finished throwing clothes from the closet into a bag and pulled the rucksack onto her shoulder. "We need to depart immediately. Her shouting may have alerted the neighbors. We need to move."

"Hold on…" Murdoc muttered, watching as the terrified blue eyes grew foggy and rolled back. Her eyelids drooped closed and she fell limp on the bed, her lips slightly parted as though peacefully sleeping. Murdoc quickly slipped one arm under her neck and another under her knees, following the cyborg back through the living room. Murdoc tried his best not to watch as the mother thanked the Lord as they carried her bound and sedated daughter through the room and out the door. They'd parked Stylo down the street to avoid suspicion, and he felt as though a spotlight were on him as he hurried along, head lowered, trying his best not to look conspicuous. They passed several groups of people, all laughing and happy, but none of them even looked their way.

As planned, Murdoc climbed into the driver's seat, dropped Pretty Rita's unconscious form into the passenger seat, quickly buckled both of them in, and sped away with Noodle-Bot congratulating him on a job well done.

Murdoc capped the syringe and slipped it into his pocket while the cyborg was distracted and then grinned over his shoulder and said, "Couldn't have done it without ya, love."

/

**Final Thoughts: **Finally, a chapter I'm actually proud of! Well…mostly. I'm not too happy with Pretty Rita's mother's dialogue. I think it's too unrealistic, but I tend to steer clear of the intoxicated, so I'm not really familiar with how they act outside of what I've seen in movies and on TV.

The next chapter has what I refer to as "the squick scene" in it, so stay tuned for that, and then the chapter after that is my favorite (or should be, anyway, since I haven't written it yet), so you've got some good stuff coming.

Technical stuffs – **I don't own the Beatles, I don't own Nirvana **whose lyrics I used in the first portion of this chapter ('Heart-Shaped Box' is the song, in case you didn't know), **I don't own Jack Daniels or Captain Morgan** which Pretty Rita's mother was drinking (and I can't even own their products, for that matter, since I'm not 21).

I'm posting this even though nobody reviewed the last chapter because honestly I understand why – it was quite boring. But this one's decently interesting, so please, **leave me a review **and tell me what you thought of it. Thank you all for reading! 3


	6. Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

2D woke up with a killer headache – unsurprising, but unfortunate – and very confused, as the ceiling looked different than it usually did when he woke up. His first irrational thought was that the ceiling had somehow shifted, but then he realized that his body was achy, the kind of achy that almost always insinuated that he had slept on a less-than-comfortable surface, and that the only part of him that was actually on the bed was half of his right leg.

He pushed himself up into a sitting position and began trying to work out how he ended up like this – had he passed out from pain again? That seemed likely, but how did he fall off the bed and not end up perpendicular to it?

It was then that he spotted the window and he let out a squeak, immediately clapping his hands over his eyes in terror. Because he had been supporting himself on his elbows, this caused him to fall back. His already throbbing head hit the floor with a muffled thud, and he choked back a scream as an explosion of pain came, so violent that he actually saw flashes of red behind his eyelids.

The adrenaline from the pain gave him enough bravery to hop up on the bed and quickly tug the curtains closed. From what he had seen of the porthole (which wasn't much, as he had been avoiding looking at it), the whale was no longer there, but he wasn't risking it coming back and scaring the living shit out of him again.

As he breathed heavily on the bed, he became aware of a dull throbbing that went along his left shoulder blade, all the way up to the socket of his left arm. Glancing down where he had fallen, he winced when he saw a pipe – a small, elbow pipe, and if he had to guess where he'd fallen, he'd say that pipe would've been pressing right into his shoulder for the past few hours. He untied the makeshift bandage on his foot and saw that it had healed quite well, and was able to walk normally into the bathroom. Once there, he tugged off his t-shirt, turning around to examine his throbbing shoulder. _Ouch. _The bruise was simply horrifying – he didn't know that a bruise could _be _that dark. It was mostly purple (plum-colored, he noted grimly) with an angry red outline and some sickening blotches of green scattered throughout. Seeing the damage only made it hurt more, and almost instantly, he found that his eyes were burning with tears. He rubbed at them furiously, not caring that it made his headache worsen.

_Stop it. It's only a bruise, _he scolded himself, _calm down! Why are you getting so worked up, anyway?_

He swallowed hard as the answer raced to the front of his mind…

_Purple and green, he mused. How ironic – like that dinosaur character on that kiddie show. Probably had a song about this – "Cuban Heels Plus Ribs Equal Bruising Fun Time" or some crap like that. _

_He would laugh as it was a pretty good joke, but it hurt just to breathe, so he didn't._

_One skinny, pale finger tentatively brushed the biggest of the blotches and he sucked in a breath as his eyes swam and he nearly threw up at the pain, tugging his t-shirt down with the vast notion that covering up the wound would make the pain go away._

_A knock at the door. He was too busy retching to answer it, but the door swung open before he could've gotten there even if he tried._

" '_ey, faceache," the familiar slightly-slurred baritone called out. He didn't answer, and then yelped as, in one very quick instant, his t-shirt was pushed back up and something freezing cold and damp came in contact with the mottled skin. He tried to flinch away, but a large, warm hand grabbed his other side, holding him still._

"_You have to ice it," Murdoc insisted, not meeting his eyes. "Can give you blood clots and stuff if you don't."_

_All 2D could say was, "Oh." They stood there in silence for a long while until Murdoc finally grabbed 2D's hand and put it on the ice._

"_15 on, 15 off," Murdoc called as he left the bathroom, closing the door behind him with a soft click._

_2D grabbed a towel off the counter and wrapped it around the bag of ice – obviously Murdoc hadn't heard that you're not supposed to put ice directly on skin – and then placed it back on the bruised area._

_An hour later, his non-bruised side still felt strangely warm in the exact shape of a hand._

2D found himself rubbing his ribs with his thumb as he reminisced. He told himself it was because he was recalling the painful bruising – which wasn't nearly as bad as this, he noted – but he couldn't remember the pain at all.

And it was the _other _side that had been bruised, anyway.

He sighed, picking the t-shirt up off the floor and tossing it in the general direction of his bed (it didn't quite make it and landed on top of the record player) as he climbed into the lift, heading down to the kitchen to get some ice.

There was no button on the panel that said 'Kitchen', and he tried several floors before finally finding it on the same floor that Murdoc's room was on – figures, he mused, that Murdoc wouldn't settle for having a mini-fridge in his room, he needed an entire full-size refrigerator right next door to hold his endless supply of booze, rum, and whatever else he was chugging almost constantly.

As expected, there _was _quite a bit of alcohol in the fridge, but was a lot of other stuff as well. He noted with a chuckle that Murdoc must be exclusively in charge of this fridge – there were several foods that definitely shouldn't be kept in the fridge sitting in there, such as a jar of peanut butter and a box of sugary cereal. Greater amusement arose when he found a few non-food items tucked away in there, like a flashlight and a phone book. Apparently 'fridge' equaled 'storage' for Murdoc; anything and everything could be put there.

There was no ice pack, unfortunately, so 2D just wrapped some ice cubes in a paper towel and hoped that would suffice. He held the ice against his shoulder (15 on, 15 off) for almost two hours, and the only thing it did was make his hand and shoulder freezing cold; the pain didn't subside. It also made his entire body, which was already achy from spending a few hours on the floor of his bedroom, quite stiff, so he opted to go for a walk on the beach.

_The ice didn't work because the bruise is so bad, _he thought to himself as he rode the lift down to the entrance, _it had absolutely nothing to do with Murdoc not being there. Absolutely nothing._

"The lift! The lift, boss!" the doorman shouted, pulling him out of his reverie, and 2D leaped back, startled, which caused him to back into a garbage bag, which began to flop around violently, causing him to scream bloody murder and grab the doorman's arm in fear.

The doorman pushed him away, apologized for startling him, and said, "I wouldn't be going out there if I was you, boss. Been pouring rain all day, yes sir."

Warily watching the floppy garbage bag, he insisted, "I can handle a little rain."

"Rain quickly turns to storms 'round here. I would really have to advise against it, boss," the doorman persisted.

2D could swear he could hear diseased moaning coming from inside that black bag, which, now that he looked at it, looked more like a body bag than anything else, and quickly said, "I'll be fine," before scurrying out the door.

"It's the 2D!" a pelican announced. "Do you remember the 2D, Seagull?"

"Quite vividly, yes, and if I do recall, he's not even supposed to be above sea level," the morose-sounding seagull stated.

"Uh, it's alright," 2D insisted, finding a bit of humor in the fact that he was now explaining himself to the wildlife, "I've got permission."

"He has permission!" the pelican exclaimed. "I like permission! Do I have permission, Seagull?"

"Permission? This is quite an interesting turn of events indeed," the seagull stated, ignoring his pelican companion, "Tell me, dear boy, how on Earth did you accomplish this?"

"I dunno, really," 2D admitted, "it just sort of…happened."

"You know what else happened? I swallowed a fishing pole. A fishing pole! Do you want to see it?" the pelican demanded excitedly.

"Just sort of happened, you say? Well, I do declare! I believe old Murdoc has gone soft in his old age," the seagull chuckled.

The pelican made some horrible choking noises, causing 2D to ask, "Is he alright?" with a line of worry forming between his brows.

"Oh, yes, he does this _all _the time. Nothing at all to worry over. Well, continue on, then. You'll want to finish whatever you're doing before the storm hits," the seagull offered. 2D nodded curtly and headed down the long flight of wooden steps.

The pelican hacked up a large fishing rod, spitting it onto the landing and flapping his wings proudly. "Did you see that?" the pelican gleefully asked, "Did you see what I did, Seagull? A fishing rod!"

"Yes, yes, quite impressive," the seagull murmured, and then, softer to himself, "Dear heavens, why me?"

/

**Final Thoughts: **Okay, so this did _not _end up going the way I'd planned. This chapter was _supposed _to be Murdoc, Noodle-Bot, and Pretty Rita going back to Plastic Beach and having an encounter with a pervert trucker at a rest stop along the way, with just a _tiny _little bit of 2D's point of view. And it ended up being all 2D and no pervert trucker XD.

So just assume that while all of this is going on with 2D, the other three traveled from Massachusetts back to Plastic Beach, because that segment's missing, and if I put it in the next one, it will mess up my chapter lineup, because I already have most of the rest of it planned out so I won't run out of 'Strawberry Fields Forever' lines as chapter titles.

Sorry. Don't hate me.

I did quite like writing this chapter – especially Seagull and Pelican. I mean, their dialogue just completely flowed. I didn't even have to think about it. They'll probably show up again because I just absolutely love writing them.

(And in case you were confused, "15 on, 15 off" is how you're supposed to apply ice to skin – fifteen minutes on the skin, fifteen off, so you don't get frostbite. I didn't know if everyone would know what that meant or not, so I thought I'd just tell you.)

Furthermore, the thing with the garbage bag is unfortunately accurate as well. Seriously, go click on the big garbage bag in the lobby of Plastic Beach, the one closest to you. Scared the living hell out of me when I accidentally clicked it while trying to get the clipboard. I kind of want to know what's in it…and at the same time, I really don't.

Anyway, **I don't own the Beatles, **and they're the only ones I used in this chapter.

And I must seriously say **OH MY GOD THANK YOU! **for all of the reviews I got on the last chapter. **TheyUsed2D, HoloXam, Gimme back that fillet o'fish **(love your username, by the way – very creative), and **SheWhoWonders, **some of whom reviewed me _twice! _I cannot express how amazing that makes me feel. I wish I could give every last one of you a hug!

If there happens to be anyone else reading this, **please leave me a review. **I also **accept anonymous reviews, **so you don't even have to tell me who you are. Although I'd love to know so I can reply to you, like **I reply to every review I get.**


	7. Misunderstanding All You See

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

2D was thoroughly drenched by the time he left the wooden staircase, but he didn't really mind. The rain was cool and refreshing, trickling soothingly along his skin. The waves were particularly loud today – crashing deafeningly onto the sand, tossing various broken items onto the shore. At first, he stopped often to examine these items, but after a while, they just became too numerous, so he ignored them except to step over them – he'd learned his lesson with the shattered glass last time and really wasn't looking to mutilate his feet any further.

After about ten minutes of wandering, he noticed that his chest felt a bit tight. After twenty, his chest began aching, and by thirty, his heart felt ready to burst out of his chest and he had to bite his lip to keep from crying out.

_What is going on with me lately? I'm jumpy and tense and feel like drowning myself in my own tears half the time, _2D mused, walking up a bit and sitting down on the sand in the hopes that the heartsickness would go away. _And for the past two weeks, I've felt like I've lost something, something really important. But I haven't discovered that I'm missing anything – I mean, if it was that important to me, I'd have figured out what it was by now, right?_

He picked up a little plastic doll, tossed about violently by the waves, and began absently wiping the mud off its face with his thumb.

_I mean, I thought being allowed to wander the island freely would make me happier, but ever since Murdoc set me free, I've been positively miserable. It's like homesickness, but I don't want to go home, I want…I don't _know_ what I want!_

_But you do, _a second voice stated, _you just don't want to know. You don't want to admit it. But you know exactly what you want._

2D sighed, staring down at the plastic face of the little toy in his hands as if begging it to give him answers – or, perhaps more accurately, change the answers he already had.

_Okay, _2D admitted, _so maybe I do miss him just a bit. But that's to be expected – he's the only company I've had for months. It doesn't imply anything but that I don't take well to loneliness. If somebody else came here, I'd feel the same way about them._

A flash of lightning made him look up, and he found himself looking into the face of a shivering young woman with a little line of worry between her brows, and thoroughly wondered if he'd completely lost it.

/

There was no doubt about it – she had been ripped into pieces. She could see it in her mind's eye – her torso in one place, her head in another, a couple of arms and legs in a pile while the other ones were elsewhere, maybe even gone for good.

The macabre image could quite possibly have been what thrust her into consciousness, tore her from the Strange Dream World she'd been floating in for who-knows-how-long. She could hear voices, one male, one female, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. She blinked her eyes open. Her vision was cloudy. She went to rub her eyes and gasped when she found her wrists bound behind her back.

"Is she awake?" the male asked, sounding much closer to her than he had a minute ago.

A soft rustling came from the backseat and she squeaked when a small but horrifically strong hand grabbed her chin and jerked it to the side. The girl looked young, about thirteen or fourteen years old, but there was a cold bitterness in her strange eyes that could only have come from decades of witnessing brutality.

"Answer me, captive," the female ordered in a voice that would be pretty if it didn't have a certain wrongness to it, like the whir of a can opener, "are you conscious?"

Pretty Rita coughed for a few minutes before managing a timid, "Yes."

The girl shoved her back into her seat. Pretty Rita longed to massage her abused jaw but was reminded once again that her hands were tied.

"Alright, now, listen up," Murdoc ordered, and Pretty Rita looked up at him. At first glance, he was hideous, all green skin and pointy yellow teeth and strange, mismatched eyes, and she had to use quite a bit of willpower to keep from looking away. But there were just barest little hints of attractiveness here and there, softening his otherwise harsh features – a highly masculine jawline here, some full lips there – to the point that he could almost be called handsome if viewed at the right angle.

"I would imagine those ropes are a bit uncomfortable," he continued, and Pretty Rita nodded once, "and I would be more than happy to untie them, but I have to ask a bit of a favor for you first."

The cyborg in the backseat giggled darkly, and Pretty Rita cringed.

"You see, darling, I'm Murdoc Niccals."

Here there was a long, expectant pause. Pretty Rita blinked at him confusedly.

"Y'know, _the _Murdoc Niccals?"

Another pause.

"Of Gorillaz fame?"

"Gorillas?" Pretty Rita repeated, and Murdoc nodded hopefully. "So you train apes? Like, for the circus?"

Murdoc groaned. "No! _No!_ The _band!_ C'mon, you _have_ to have heard of us, we're world-famous!"

The android was giggling even more darkly now, and Pretty Rita was unsure whether she was laughing at her or Murdoc, but either way, it put her on edge.

"Never heard of you," she shrugged, and then, as Murdoc's expression grew grim, "but I'm sure you're good."

"We're the best!" Murdoc grinned. "Our last music video was the most successful in iTunes history; right behind Lady Gaga's 'Alejandro'…I'm sure you've heard of Lady Gaga?"

"Er, well…yeah," Pretty Rita admitted.

"Of course you have," Murdoc muttered, and then, remembering that he was supposed to be the kidnapper in this situation, not the drama queen, he added, "You're going to sing for me, love."

"Sing for you?" Pretty Rita echoed. "You don't already _have_ a singer?"

"Of course we have a singer! And he's brilliant! Stunning! Amazing!" Murdoc snapped, and then found himself hoping that the strange light would mask his quickly reddening cheeks. "Er, that is, um, he's…good. At singing. But we need guests. Lots and lots of guests! Give our fans a bit of change, y'know?"

Pretty Rita nodded, "Alright. So you want me to be a guest on your next album?"

Murdoc shook his head. "Not quite. We've already got the album released. But we're making a B-Sides to it, and, well…none of the celebrity guests we had want to do it."

Pretty Rita raised an eyebrow, "Why?"

Murdoc rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, "Well, uh, it may have something to do with the whole Kidnapping and Holding Them Against Their Will thing, but, uh…look, the thing is, we need a guest on the album, and I picked you. And you're going to do it."

"And if I don't?" Pretty Rita demanded.

Murdoc leered at her, "I believe you noticed how strong my little Noodle is…I'm sure she'd be quite happy to _convince_ you to reconsider, eh?"

Pretty Rita shot a nervous glance at the android in the backseat, and swallowed as Noodle-Bot gave her a particularly unsettling grin.

"Ah! Here we are!" Murdoc announced, and Stylo lurched violently, making some unpleasant screeching sounds and then shuddering. Looking out the window, Pretty Rita noticed that the fins were gone and, in their place, was a normal-looking car door and, beneath that, normal-looking tires.

"So," Murdoc called, and Pretty Rita turned her attention back to him, "what will it be, sweetie? Are you going to cooperate or not?"

Pretty Rita sighed. "Yeah, alright. Consider my cooperation to be all yours."

Murdoc was cheering inwardly, but managed to keep a smooth exterior, "I knew you'd see reason. Noodle, love, untie our captive…or should I say, our new guest?"

Noodle-Bot grabbed Pretty Rita roughly by the shoulders and turned her so the android could reach her wrists. Within seconds, the ropes fell to the car floor. Pretty Rita glanced down, expecting her ankles to still be tied, but was surprised to see that they weren't. Surprised but relieved, she decided, and then she followed Murdoc's lead in getting out of the car.

It was almost as wet on dry land as it had been in the ocean – it didn't even feel like raindrops, more like buckets of water, like standing under a waterfall. She was soaked to the bone within seconds.

"Shit," Murdoc muttered, and Pretty Rita turned around to find, to her horror, that Noodle-Bot was twitching unnaturally, what appeared to be blood dripping out of one eye.

"Is she alright?" Pretty Rita gasped, rushing to the cyborg's side and grabbing her wrist. "Oh my god! She has no pulse!"

"That's because she's not human, doll," Murdoc grumbled, pushing her aside and scooping the android up into his arms as if she weighed nothing. "I forgot about her thing with lightning – shorts out her central fuse. Really ought to get that fixed…in the meantime, I've got to go get her charged before her circuits completely fry."

"What do you want me to do?" Pretty Rita queried as Murdoc began trudging up the bank.

"I don't care what you do, just be in the studio by ten o'clock tomorrow morning," he replied, wiping the blood – which, now that Pretty Rita looked closer, was actually black and looked more like oil than anything else – off the android's cheek and muttering, "It's alright, Noodle, love, we'll have you fixed up in no time, don't worry, you'll be okay…"

Pretty Rita sighed, pushing some wet hair out of her eyes and looking around. The sand was a strange pinkish-orange, and debris of all kind littered the shore. Upon closer inspection, this 'debris' was all random household items – furniture, toys, clothing, and, sickeningly, even a battered animal or two. Trying to avoid looking at the poor little creatures, she began heading down the beach.

Once the thought occurred to her, she checked her pockets, and sighed in relief – it didn't appear that Murdoc had even gone through them as her iPod and film canister of pills were still tucked safely away. Very thankful for the waterproof coating on the iPod, she climbed over an overturned washing machine and gasped when she spotted someone with very bright blue hair sitting on the ground, holding a little plastic doll and staring down like their whole world had been shattered.

_I should just walk away, _she decided, _I have no idea if he's dangerous or not, and I'm not really looking for conversation, anyway._

She was about to do just that when she was overcome with a strange tugging sensation, like a puppy being trained to walk on a leash. It took her a minute to realize that she was being drawn to this blue-haired somebody. Their aura was positively magnetizing; she couldn't pull herself away.

_It couldn't hurt just to make sure they're okay, _she insisted, and with that, she walked over to them.

He looked up at her and she gasped – the man had no eyes.

/

"Hello there," 2D said cautiously, unsure whether she was a hallucination or not.

"Hi," she replied, and the line of worry got deeper, "Are you alright?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, I suppose I'm okay. Uh…not to be rude or anything, but…who _are_ you?"

After you got past the missing eyes, the blue-haired man was outrageously pretty – had he been wearing a shirt, she definitely would've mistaken him for a female. His lips were ridiculously full and light pink, his nose upturned and petite, his eyelashes were long, thick, and dark blue, and, upon closer inspection, he was actually hourglass-shaped – a very skinny hourglass, but an hourglass nonetheless.

"Pretty Rita, if my mother's word is anything to go by," she answered. "And you are…?"

"2D," he supplied.

She raised an eyebrow. "What, because you're two-dimensional?"

"Short for Two-Dents, because of the two dents in my head," he replied. Now both of Pretty Rita's eyebrows were raised. "Eight-ball fractures in my eyes. That's why they're black, or didn't you notice?"

"Oh," Pretty Rita nodded slowly. "I thought they were just missing…I've never seen an eight-ball fracture where the entire eye went black…usually it's just the iris."

"Yeah, that's what the doctor said. I guess I was hit pretty hard," he shrugged. "Or hit the curb pretty hard, depending on which eye you're referring to."

"Damn," Pretty Rita breathed, sitting down on the sand next to him, "can you see alright?"

"Crystal-clear," he answered, grinning widely. _How strange, _Pretty Rita thought, _he's so pretty that even missing his two front teeth doesn't detract from his appearance._

"Wow," she gasped. "That's just…wow."

"I guess," he shrugged.

"So are you part of this Gorillaz band that Murdoc keeps bragging about?"

"Yeah, I'm the singer," he replied with another wide grin.

She chuckled, "I should've known. You look like a frontman."

"A lot of people say that," 2D agreed, but there was no boastfulness in his voice; he said it only as a matter of fact, as if he were commenting on the weather.

A clap of thunder startled them both. "We should head back up to the mansion," 2D remarked, "before it gets even worse."

"Can it _get_ any worse than this?" Pretty Rita queried, getting to her feet and then offering 2D a hand. He was ridiculously easy to lift; she wondered how long it had been since he'd last eaten.

"Oh, yeah, definitely," 2D nodded, and Pretty Rita winced, following him through the debris quickly, trying not to notice the sky turning green above them.

/

Gulping down booze was like greeting an old friend that Murdoc was ecstatic to see. He'd missed the way it burned as it slid down his throat – pain and pleasure mixed into one bottle.

He heard the lift ding out in the hallway, but he didn't think anything of it until the door to the kitchen clicked open and a pair of voices could be heard.

2D was reminded of those days of high school, when he'd carry four or five textbooks in his bag at once and be panting as he walked in the door – then the relief of tossing the rucksack onto the floor, the soothing sensation across his shoulders. It felt just like that when he saw Murdoc sitting at the counter, chugging booze. It was like his entire world had just come back together.

"There you kids are," Murdoc grunted without looking up. "I see you've met one another. Good. You'll be getting to know each other quite well in the studio starting tomorrow."

"Cool," 2D agreed, and that was when Murdoc happened to glance over at him as if just to see that his dullard hadn't changed too much while he was gone.

It was like something out of a very, very dirty magazine – those water droplets rolling down taut, pale skin. He followed one as it dripped off a strand of hair, slid along his collarbone and onto his chest, trickled down a highly visible rib down to his stomach, where it traced his lower abs and came to rest on a jutting hipbone.

Which, then, of course, drew Murdoc's attention to his hips – too much of his hips. He must've lost some weight since buying those jeans; they were sliding down almost obscenely low. The fact that they were now soaking wet probably didn't help much, and Murdoc felt a pleasant warmth in his stomach when he noticed that they were not only wet, they were absolutely _clinging_ to him in a way that was particularly mouthwatering, leaving very, _very_ little to the imagination and also implying quite heavily that they were _all he was wearing…_

"Murdoc…Murdoc? Are you alright?" 2D asked, and Murdoc blinked himself back into reality.

"What? Yeah, of course. I'm fine. I'm fine! Why wouldn't I be?" Murdoc snapped, thanking sweet _Satan_ that he was sitting down – there would be quite a bit of explaining to do if he weren't.

"You looked a little dizzy there for a second," 2D muttered, walking over to him and resting a hand on his shoulder. "Are you sure you're alright? Your face is awfully red."

The hand was warm and wet and it _tingled _and… "Get _off _me, faceache, I said I'm _fine!"_

_I am not turned on by the dullard…I am not turned on by the dullard…I am not turned on by the dullard…_

2D bit his lip, looking hurt. "Alright. Sorry. I was just asking…"

Pretty Rita was shooting Murdoc a particularly nasty look – he wondered if it was because she was a bit quicker than the dullard and figured out what Murdoc's predicament was or because he was responsible for the broken expression on 2D's face. For once, he was _really_ hoping it was the latter.

"It's fine, it's fine," Murdoc insisted, and then sighed. "Look, it's been a rough few weeks. I haven't slept in about four days. So forgive me if I'm not the most pleasant person to be around."

2D brightened. "That's okay, Muds, I understand."

"Good. Now run along, you two, I'm busy here," Murdoc ordered. The two of them left.

Murdoc sighed and tipped his head back. "Way to go, Murdoc, old pal. You've officially lost all good taste you ever had."

And with that, he grabbed the bottle of booze and headed to his bedroom to "think things over."

/

**Final Thoughts: **Er…do you guys think this should be M-rated? The slash is supposed to be more romantic than sexual, but there will be quite a bit of lust coming from Murdoc, and I think that might need to be M-rated. I don't know.

Anyway, this chapter was VERY fun to write and I have to admit, I got a little hot and bothered picturing 2D in that last paragraph there and pretty much just poured out my obsessions onto paper. And I'm the one who claims to love them as a collective group rather than obsessing over individual members. I guess the fan-art is getting to me, ha-ha-ha.

**I don't own the Beatles, **and **I don't own Lady Gaga** who was referenced in the middle of this chapter.

Pretty Rita sounds so bland in this chapter. She's supposed to be all fiery and cynical, and she's just nervous and generic. I mean, there are reasons why, but I don't much like that her first appearance has her quite OOC. Ah well. I'll fix it in later chapters.

**Reviews! I love em! I accept anonymous! I reply to all**! (Seriously, you know the drill, ha-ha.)


	8. It's Getting Hard to be Someone

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

"Where the hell have you two been?" Murdoc snarled as 2D and Pretty Rita came in the studio door.

2D gasped and jumped a mile, but Pretty Rita merely scoffed, "And a lovely morning to you, too."

Murdoc put on a cheesy fake smile and, in the highest pitch he could produce, replied, "Oh, I sincerely apologize if I didn't express how _delighted _I am to see my two singers stroll in _twenty minutes late!_"

In an equally high pitch with added breathiness, Pretty Rita countered, "Well it's wonderful to know the resident jerk-ass got a nice early morning start!"

Murdoc sneered, returning to his regular tone. "So the new girl grew a backbone overnight? Or are we just a little behind on our morning painkillers?"

Pretty Rita bared her teeth, but 2D grabbed her arm, silencing her. She gave Murdoc one final glare before heading over to the microphones.

Murdoc, however, was not so easily assuaged and was about to cement his victory with another slam when he happened to notice the massive, painful-looking bruise on 2D's left shoulder blade, revealed halfway by the sleeveless shirt the singer was wearing.

"What the bloody hell happened to your shoulder?" Murdoc demanded, grabbing 2D by his uninjured shoulder and spinning him around roughly.

"Nothing major, Muds. Just fell on a pipe in my room is all," 2D assured him.

Murdoc felt both relieved and enraged – relieved, because he had feared that the bruise may have been caused by Murdoc himself, but enraged because for Satan's _sake, _couldn't he leave the dullard alone for a couple of weeks without the idiot _maiming _himself?

"You didn't think to ice this?" Murdoc queried, spinning the singer back around to inspect the bruise. He managed to stop himself from wincing, but it wasn't easy – the bruise looked downright _awful._

"I tried to, but it didn't really work," 2D admitted. Murdoc groaned.

"Satan, 2D…alright, fine, then. You've convinced me. I'll give you injury leave…but we're back here in two days, and you two had _better_ be prepared to sing for me like caged canaries!" Murdoc snapped.

"No, really, Muds, it's fine…" 2D insisted at the same time that Pretty Rita growled,

"How the hell does an injured shoulder mean he can't sing?"

Murdoc glared daggers at the girl and snapped, "This is _my band, _and if I say I don't want an injured vocalist singing on my album, then _that's what's going to happen!"_

2D stammered out, "Murdoc, really, I think…"

"Then _don't_ think," Murdoc interrupted. "Now both of you, go somewhere _not by me!"_

2D opened his mouth to protest but Pretty Rita grabbed his elbow, "C'mon, D, just forget it."

He looked at Murdoc with an unreadable expression in his eyes before nodding once without looking at her and letting her lead him out of the studio.

Murdoc sighed and drummed his fingers on a music stand for a minute before angrily kicking the music stand over and snarling at the ground.

2D paused, looked back, and sighed before climbing into the elevator. He'd hoped Murdoc coming back would fix the tangled strings of his life, but the only thing that had happened so far was that they had pulled into a tight, possibly unfixable knot.

Pretty Rita lightly squeezed his arm and offered an understanding smile. She was a good actress – she'd almost fooled him, almost made him think she understood.

But of course she didn't. How could she? He didn't even understand.

He smiled at her anyway, though, and that seemed to satisfy her. Good. There was only room for one miserable singer in this band.

/

**Final Thoughts: **I am so, so sorry for taking so ungodly long in updating. It's seriously just been one thing after another – my power was out for three days, and then, two days later, our cable went out for a week. Then, once we finally got it back, there was a death in the family and I had to go four hours for the funeral services. And, well, in all honesty, I didn't feel like writing slash for a while after that due to my not-so-great emotional status.

And even _now, _when I'm finally emotionally stable again, I am now enrolled in a summer class. Granted, it only goes from 11:00 to 1:00 (sometimes until 3:00), but then there's homework and stuff.

So updates still might come a bit far apart, but I _promise, _I won't take _that _long ever again.

Technical stuff! Yeah! **I don't own the Beatles, **which I referenced in both the main title and the chapter titles, which you really should know by now, but just to be safe, I'm saying it again.

It's been so long that I'm not entirely sure which reviewers I thanked and which I haven't, so I'll just say that, in general, **thank you to all of my lovely reviewers!**

And still, **I reply to every review, **so please drop me a line and tell me what you thought!


	9. But It All Works Out

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

Strange, how much stuff had accumulated on his bed. Though admittedly less strange when you pondered exactly how long it had been since he'd slept in it.

Though the strangeness returned when he actually began pondering how long it had been since he'd slept in general. He'd said four days yesterday, but that was really just a rough estimate; it was more than likely to be a much longer time.

He turned the stereo on without bothering to check what CD was in it and shoved most of the stuff off his bed, curling up on it.

It was a testament to the unhealthy sleep habits he'd fallen into that the bed felt so foreign, he could hardly even claim it as his own. Someone could very easily swap his bed with another and he wouldn't even notice. (The likelihood of this happening was admittedly rather slim, but stranger things had happened.)

He could only focus on the unfamiliar feeling of the bed for so long; soon something akin to a red hot poker jabbed him in the brain, bringing him back to the problem at hand.

That bruise had bothered him. _Really_ bothered him. Just picturing that bruise made his innards curl in on themselves.

And that was so _wrong. _It was one thing to be bothered by a bruise he himself had inflicted. He still frowned upon it, but he supposed feeling guilt while watching his victim wince every time he moved all because of Murdoc's own problems that usually had nothing to do with the victim…well, that was acceptable if only because it was rather difficult to stave off.

But _this, _he didn't even know what to call _this. _It was similar to guilt, but he hadn't _done_ anything. (This was a strange enough idea in itself – when was the last time someone within his vicinity was hurt and it _wasn't_ his fault?)

What did you call it when you felt bad about something bad happening to someone when you didn't do it yourself?

_Sympathy. _The answer hit him like a ton of bricks, and the weight of it like…more bricks? Eh. He'd never been one for creative metaphors, but the meaning stood.

Now he knew he'd completely lost it – yesterday he was turned on by the sight of the blue-haired moron soaking wet in tight jeans, and now he was feeling _sympathy _for him?

He'd never considered himself jumpy, but he jumped a good three feet when a hesitant knock came at his door, interrupting his muddled thoughts.

"Gah! What?" he cried, then, attempting to compose himself, "Eh, I mean, uh, who is it?"

"Pretty Rita," the barely-feminine voice came from the other side, slightly muffled by the thick door.

He groaned inwardly at the intrusion – especially by an intrusion by the recently titled Little Miss Snarker – but muttered, "Come in," anyway.

The door creaked open and he glanced up just in time to see her push it back closed and lean against it, apparently not wanting to go any further into his room than she had to.

"And to what do I owe the honor of having you in my room?" he demanded.

"I was just…" she paused mid-sentence, cocking her head to the side with the barest trace of a smile ghosting across her thin lips. "Which part is this?"

He raised an eyebrow at her, wondering if she'd completely lost her mind, when it finally clicked that she was referring to the _Pink Floyd_ song playing in the background, one of the _'Another Brick in the Wall' _songs.

Waiting a moment, he concluded, "Two, I think."

She nodded slowly, the smile growing slightly, and she crossed the room (well, actually, it was only about four steps – the bed took up most of the room) to sit on the corner of his bed. Instinct told him that he ought to snap at her for being so forward – who did she think she was, sitting on _his bed?_ – but found that he really had no desire to do so. When her mouth wasn't running, she wasn't really that bad, honestly.

"This was Morgan's favorite movie – _'The Wall', _I mean. I think…yeah, I'm pretty sure this was my favorite scene. This was the one with the meat grinder, right?" She didn't pause for him to answer. He wasn't sure he would've, anyway. "He always teased me for screaming the first time I saw those faces, but I'll bet you anything they scared him the first time, too." She laughed softly, staring down at her feet. "Maybe not, though, since he was so crazy about the scene with _'The Trial.'_ "

Without even really thinking about who he was talking to, Murdoc sat up and shook his head, "So you're telling me you screamed at the putty faces, but you were absolutely _fine_ with the shape-shifting mother in _'The Trial?' "_

She looked up at him, eyes flashing excitedly, "Oh, gods, no, I begged him to spare me and fast-forward about two minutes in!…he didn't, of course, fucking psycho sadist…" It seemed to be the profanity that pulled her back to the present, the second the words left her mouth, the shine in her eyes quickly went out and she scooted away from him.

"But, um, anyway, I was just looking for 2D," she stated, nearly in a monotone – a far cry from the cheeriness in her voice mere moments ago.

"Oh. Well, he's not here," Murdoc replied, following her lead and scooting away, adopting an indifferent, uninterested tone. Strange, how easy it felt – how natural.

"I can see that, thank you," she snapped, but the proper viciousness wasn't quite there. It was like an untrained actor reading a line from a script and told to sound angry and bitter and snarky – the tone was there, but the feeling wasn't.

"Okay," Murdoc replied, shrugging one shoulder. "Good luck finding him, then, I guess."

"You're not worried?" she asked, the faux-bitterness still there, coming out of her mouth but not quite making it to her traumatized eyes.

"Why should I be?" he replied, sensing a verbal attack in the making.

She sneered. "You got so worked up over that little bruise, I thought you'd be running out to the beach calling his name like he was a lost puppy at the first inkling that he might be missing."

Murdoc curled a lip, "It wasn't exactly a _little_ bruise; it took up his whole shoulder blade and looked painful as hell itself!"

Pretty Rita attempted to look angry, but he could see that she was pleased, that she'd gotten the reaction she'd wanted. But, like a sugar cube dropped into a cup of tea, the anger fizzled away and an unreadable expression came across her face.

"You care about him," she stated, and he flinched.

"He's my singer. I don't want him getting himself put out of commission," he replied, trying to sound nonchalant.

She shook her head, a small smile coming across her lips, "No, you care about him as a person. You don't like it when he gets hurt. It hurts _you_ when he gets hurt."

"That's ridiculous," he snapped, but it must not have had the right malice to it because it only made her smile grow larger.

Completely from desperation, he growled, "Yeah, well you're not as tough as you say you are either! I don't know what happened with your Morgan, but whatever happened, it must've really torn you up, because it _hurt_ for you to think about him! So you know what? You can just shut it about me! You've got your own issues! Why don't you deal with _them_ before you start bitching about everyone else!"

Never did he ever dream that he would regret shutting her up, but as her eyes widened and she let her head fall forward, taking in a few shaky breaths, there was a distinctive twist beneath his ribs. _Damn it, _she looked nothing like Noodle, and yet she somehow managed to bite her lip just like Noodle used to.

_Damn_ his weakness for sadness in young women. _Damn. It. All._

"Okay," he muttered, and she looked up at him briefly, guarded, like she expected to be hurt again, "yeah, I care about him. In fact, I probably _more_ than care about him." Quickly returning to his senses, "Which is not something you should tell him. Or anyone, for that matter. _Ever._"

"Don't worry," she insisted, smirking, "your little crush is safe with me." Murdoc momentarily got worried, but her expression softened and she solemnly stated, "But you should tell him. Because someday, it'll be too late, and he'll be leaving you. And you'll think, 'Now's my chance, I'll tell him now, he'll stay!' But he'll think you're only saying it to make him stay. And he won't believe you."

Her eyes glistened for a minute, and Murdoc was terrified that she was going to cry, but they dried up quickly and she smiled at him. "But I'll keep your secret. I promise."

And for some reason, even though he knew he really _shouldn't, _he found himself believing her.

Then, just as suddenly as the knock on his door had come, she was off his bed and on her bare feet.

Singing to herself, " '_We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control…' "_ as she walked, making him yet again wonder what had made Satan endow such an unattractive girl with such a stunning voice.

And then, with a click of the door, she was gone, leaving Murdoc alone yet again.

"Fuck," he muttered, dropping his head back onto the pillow with a groan.

" '_All in all it's just another brick in the wall…all in all you're just another brick in the wall…' "_

/

**Final Thoughts: **Okay, so the last chapter was sort of a "Dude, I need to post something!" chapter. But this actually moves the plot along. So, uh…yay!

Thank you to** NaNa Nadia, **my only reviewer on the last chapter. Much appreciated!

**I do not own the Beatles, **which are referenced in the main title and the chapter titles, and **I do not own Pink Floyd, **which I referenced several times during this chapter. Okay, okay, so I have to say this – I am _completely _obsessed with that movie. It scares the _shit_ out of me, but it's my favorite of all time. (_'The Trial'_ is the scariest scene, in my opinion, to the point that I had trouble picking out the scariest scene for Murdoc to comment on. In truth, I actually find that empty-eyed thing during the first line from Pink testifying to being crazy the freakiest thing of all, but I didn't know what to call it, so I went with the morphing airplane mother, which is pretty freaky as well. And the meat grinder scene in _'Another Brick in the Wall'_ is horrifying, too, but you should really expect that from any scene called 'the meat grinder scene.')

Anyway, **please review, **and I apologize once again for taking _forever_ to update this. I hope I haven't lost you all.


	10. It Doesn't Matter Much to Me

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

"_No, Squidward, we already played babble like an idiot!" _

_He laughed, holding nothing back, cackling in glee at the cartoon sponge on the screen. She rolled her eyes, but once her face was hidden by her book, she let a small smile crawl across her features. Because seriously, a 6'3" 18-year-old boy getting such unrestrained joy from a cartoon whose core demographic was pre-teens at oldest? Pretty much the most adorable thing she'd ever seen._

"_C'mon, you're missing all the good parts!" he whined, elbowing her in the ribs. _

_She snorted. "You act like I __**want**__ to spend my weekend reading the most boring book ever written. I haven't even had time to __**eat**_, _let alone watch cartoons."_

"_You were the one who signed up for AP English. Suck it up," he teased. She rolled her eyes._

"_You're hilarious," she muttered. "Now, seriously, leave me be – I've still got six more chapters of Gulliver to get through."_

"_Bitch," he grumbled._

"_Dick," she replied without looking up, but once again a small smile spread across her features at the playful teasing. A few minutes later, he got up, and when he returned, he handed her a can of Monster and a snack bag of Cheetos._

_Confused, she let out a "What…?"_

_He shrugged nonchalantly, dropping back onto the couch cushion next to her. "I don't want you to be hungry just because of some stupid novel."_

_She stared at him, eyes wide, lips slightly parted, unable to form the words she needed to say._

_He laughed, raising an eyebrow, "Why are you looking at me like that?"_

_She shook her head and he shrugged, returning to watching Spongebob, oblivious to the warm feeling she now had in her stomach._

She cried out as her shoulder suddenly erupted in pain.

"Good, you're awake." Pretty Rita jumped at the voice coming from no more than six inches from her ear, jerking herself into a sitting position so fast it made her head spin.

"What the _hell?" _ she cried upon viewing the android's smug expression. She rubbed her throbbing shoulder, which appeared to please the cyborg immensely.

Jeez. Sadistic much?

"Murdoc gave me orders to ensure that you were in the studio at precisely 10:00am," Noodle-Bot replied matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, but…I mean, you couldn't have woken me _without_ wailing on my shoulder?"

Noodle-Bot scoffed, rolled her eyes, "I did no such 'wailing.' I merely grasped your shoulder. I was going to shake you awake, but mere grasping woke you. I suppose I overestimated your pain threshold and gripped too firmly. I express my deepest apologies and assure you that it will not happen again."

The self-satisfied little smirk on her full, rosy lips plainly stated that she was not at all sorry and it was _quite_ likely to be the way Pretty Rita was awoken from now on.

Pretty Rita peered around the study, reacquainting herself with her surroundings, before rummaging in her rucksack for a set of clean (well, clean-_ish) _clothes. Upon finding some, she took hold of her pajama pants, intending to remove them, when she felt the eerie gaze of Noodle-Bot on her.

"Uh, do you mind? Changing here," Pretty Rita snapped.

The smirk grew larger. "I have orders to _ensure_ your presence in the studio, and if I were to leave, who is to say you would not promptly resume slumbering?"

Alright. _That_ did it. "Get. _OUT!" _Pretty Rita shouted, jumping to her feet.

"You cannot harm me, captive. My engineering will not allow it," Noodle-Bot coyly replied, but as Pretty Rita gritted her teeth and clenched her hands into fists, added, "I will return in fifteen minutes, at which time it would be in your best interest to be en route to the recording studio. Fifteen minutes, captive. Use them wisely."

And with that, she turned on the heel of her scuffed combat boot and walked away.

Pretty Rita dressed faster than she ever had in her _life, _cursing the android with every breath she took.

/

A distantly eerie, distinctly familiar keyboard melody greeted her as she slipped in the door.

"See? I told you she would be punctual," Noodle-Bot smirked. The android was seated on an amplifier, boots dangling a few inches above the ground, holding a page of sheet music in one hand and gripping a dagger that was both disturbingly long and unnervingly sharp in the other.

"I've made it a habit not to doubt you, angel-love," Murdoc replied, shooting the cyborg a sharp-toothed grin, which she returned with a smile so sugary-sweet it was cavity-inducing.

"Morning, Pretty Rita," 2D remarked, the music abruptly stopping as his hands left the keys in order to hand her some sheet music. "Look these over. Murdoc says we're starting in ten."

She nodded slowly, already having forsaken her mind to the words on the page. 2D smiled slightly; it was the first time he'd ever seen her focused on _anything, _it was nice to see the zombie image dissipate.

It didn't seem like anything even _close_ to ten minutes later when Murdoc called out, "Alright, people, let's make a chart-topper, eh?"

Everyone in the room rushed into place, and Pretty Rita, obviously having never recorded in a professional studio before, felt a bit lost until 2D took the liberty of grabbing her wrist and leading her to the center mic.

"I haven't- " she stammered, knees feeling like jelly.

But 2D quickly whispered, "I'll cue you when it's your turn, don't worry," and sounded so innocently sincere that Pretty Rita felt all her anxiety wash away.

A soothing tune came from an acoustic guitar, and even though Pretty Rita could clearly see her playing it on the other side of 2D, it still took a bit for her mind to process that it was the android, yes, _that_ android, that was making the guitar produce such a beautiful melody.

She was so transfixed by the utter _paradox_ of the situation that she didn't notice that a pair of headphones had been placed on her head until they started playing music. She reflexively touched them with the middle and index fingers of one hand, and 2D smiled and shrugged.

What happened next went beyond being paradoxical and shocking; it thoroughly took her breath away.

2D took a breath and the voice that came from his throat was simply _too amazing for this Earth. _She couldn't even compare it to the voice of an angel – there wasn't a single angel out there that wouldn't turn green with envy upon hearing that melodic masterpiece of a voice.

"_I opened my eyes last night / And saw you in the low light / Walking down by the bay, on the shore / Staring up at the planes that aren't there anymore…"_

She was so caught up in listening to 2D's vocal chords producing magic that the light touch on her wrist was truly jarring.

She did, however, recover quickly enough to sing her line without flaw, "_Time together is just never quite enough…"_

And the too-good-for-this-world voice answered her, "_When you and I are alone, I've never felt so at home…"_

They went back and forth, as if in some odd, melodic conversation, "_What will it take to make or break this hint of love?"_

"_We need time…"_

And then harmony, "_Only time…"_

Despite being taught that passive singing was pretty much damnable, she found her thoughts wandering. _Yeah. Time. Three years and still…_

She caught herself quickly – _Shit! What am I doing? – _and by some miracle came in on time, "_When we're apart whatever are you thinking of?…" _

Her shame at thinking of _him _at a time like _this_ continued for quite a long time (making her _quite_ glad that her bizarre skin tone made it impossible for her to outwardly blush) until halfway through the next verse.

Because right on the line, "_I feel as if I were home some nights / When we count all the ship lights…_" 2D looked right past her to the man standing a few feet away from her, strumming the bass expertly.

When he realized she'd caught him, he smiled sheepishly and shrugged.

That was when it hit her.

She and 2D were singing a love song _together, _yes, but anyone who thought they were even remotely singing to each other should be institutionalized.

They were both singing to someone else, someone they both thought to be far out of their reach, and they smiled sadly as they met eyes as if to say, '_I love you for understanding that I don't love you._'

And once they finished, Murdoc, with a big, boastful grin on his face, shouted, "Sweet _Satan, _it's brilliant! I'm a god! Sweet Satan, I'm a fucking _god!"_ and everyone complained as his shouting was picked up by the sensitive microphones and came through the headphones, deafening them all.

/

**Final Thoughts: **Sorry for taking so long – I'm sure you're getting quite sick of my excuses, but I'll throw one at you anyway – I had to find a song for them to play in this chapter, and _none_ of the songs I found sounded right.

But then I came across this one, so I guess all's good.

Alright, disclaimer time: **I don't own Spongebob Squarepants, Monster Energy Drinks, or Cheetos, **all of which appeared in her dream. (That quote is real, by the way, comes from the episode with the 'bomb' pie that Squidward buys from pirates. Makes sense in context.) **I don't own the Beatles, **which are reference in the title, chapter names, and the name of the OC. (Technically, it's also referenced in the beginning of the chapter – the song that 2D is playing on the keyboard is the part from 'Blue Jay Way' that goes _'Please don't be long / Please don't you be very long / Please don't be long / Or I may be asleep…' _I had planned for this to be revealed by him singing it, but I really wanted that moment where Pretty Rita is shocked by how gorgeous his voice is in the middle of recording.) Furthermore, **I don't own 'The Saltwater Room' by Owl City, **which is the song that they're recording.

Thanks to all of my reviewers, **skitzoism, Endless Happiness, melianatara, hotokeu-chan **(who is apparently translating this fic into Spanish – my fic is officially multi-lingual!), **Morte Candy, SheWhoWonders, safelifeisfakelife, **and **Museteki.**

**I would like to give a ****SUPER**** thank you to ****safelifeisfakelife, **who found my fic worthy of recommending on the TVTropes Gorillaz fanfic recs page. **You, sir, are my hero.**

***insert begging for reviews here. Uggs is lazy today, and you guys are probably sick of hearing it anyway ***


	11. No One I Think Is In My Tree

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

"_Finally finished writing this song," Murdoc reported on his Twitter account earlier this month, "and I'm thinking it's going to be seriously killer. Look out, world, it's gonna melt your face. MELT YOUR FACE!"_

_Gorillaz fans all around the world have been eagerly awaiting the rumored new 'face-melting' track ever since, and as of yesterday, Murdoc came through on his promise with the release of the new Gorillaz single, 'Manta Ray Gun.'_

"_I was going to wait until P-Sides was released to make this one into a single," Murdoc admitted, "but I felt like a monster keeping this from you guys. Now, I've been called a lot of terrible things in my life, most of them completely true, but I've never, ever been called a monster. And I intend to keep it that way. So here you are, folks – 'Manta Ray Gun!'"_

_Aside from the melody, which manages to be sweet, catchy, and memorable without being too commercial, we get another outstanding performance from will-be-legendary vocalist/keyboardist 2D, which I must say could very well be his best vocal performance since the chart-topping hit 'Feel Good Inc' from 2005 album 'Demon Days.' _

_But the most talked-about topic regarding the new single is the new female voice we hear alongside 2D. Unlike the other guests from this phase, this young woman is completely unknown in the music world, bringing up the question of what, exactly, caused the band to seek her out._

_Well, there's no official word on it yet, but if you ask me, if I happened to hear that voice, I'd do a track with her in a heartbeat._

_And the critics, for the most part, agree. Gail Shope, music critic for popular website , proclaims, "Murdoc Niccals cannot write a bad song, and this is no exception. This is a song which both makes you want to dance while simultaneously pulling on your heartstrings. And really, what more can you ask for?"_

_Edmund Lore of Music Century Magazine remarked, "If you're going to keep your fans waiting, you'd better put out something worth waiting for. And let me be the first to say that this was most definitely worth waiting for. Another wonderful Gorillaz hit to add to your collection. As for the new girl, well, I won't deny that she's got some pipes, but I'm not getting too attached just yet – you __**do**__ remember Paula Cracker, right, people?"_

_New girl aside, however, critics seem to agree that Murdoc has made yet another chart-topper. In fact, the only one who __**doesn't**__ seem to love 'Manta Ray Gun' is the infamous Dr. Wurzel, writer for The International, who was quoted as saying, "Murdoc has about as much talent as he does non-gray hairs – and that's not much. Face the music, people, Gorillaz are washed-up. Their drummer and guitarist are completely MIA, Murdoc is overdue for an extended stay at the nursing home, 3D (or WD-40 or C-3PO or whatever the hell the blue-haired girly-looking one is going by now) still has yet to regain the many, many brain cells lost in his many car accidents, and now Gorillaz have gone to an ultimate low – they've grabbed some teenybopper off a street corner, thrown her in front of a microphone, and told her to sing into it without caring whether she could hit a single note. Sad, sad, sad."_

_Despite the particularly harsh nature of Wurzel's review, Gorillaz seem far from 'washed-up', and apparently have some fans in high places – none other than Shakira was heard saying to the paparazzi, "What am I listening to? Gorillaz, 'Manta Ray Gun.' Had it on repeat all day. Good stuff."_

_Perhaps the most noteworthy comment comes from Angelique Thibault, host of popular talk show 'Angie', who, while closing her show this morning, stated, "We're all fans of Gorillaz here, right, guys?" This was met with much cheering from the studio audience. "See, Murdoc? We love you here. How's about you have a little chat with us next week? Bring the whole band, heck, bring the new girl while you're at it, we've got plenty of couch space. Hope to see you soon, poppet."_

_No word yet on whether the talk show appearance is going to happen, but the fans are already going wild._

_-Jin Ni, 'Reviews '_

**Final Thoughts: **Sorry for the shortness – the next chapter is planned to be much, much longer and hopefully a bit more humorous than the past few chapters as well. And, of course, containing a hearty spoonful of Murdoc/2D slashiness. Y'know, for kids!

And as cool as it would be to be able to say I do, **I don't own Twitter** or **Shakira. **Trust me, if I did, I would not be spending my Thursday afternoon writing fanfiction, I would be out spending the OBSCENE amounts of money I'd be receiving.

I also **don't own WD-40, **which is this stuff you spray on squeaky metal to make it…less squeaky. I also **don't own C-3PO**, who is a robot from Star Wars.

And although the general disclaimer at the top of this page pretty much covers all this, since it's all Gorillaz related, I would really rather _not_ be sued, so here you go: **I don't own Demon Days, Feel Good Inc, Paula Cracker, Dr. Wurzel, **or **The International.**

All of the fake names (reporters, critics, talk show hosts, talk shows, magazines, websites, etc.) were randomly generated by an online name generator.

Furthermore, it took me about two seconds each to write the good reviews, and about half an hour to think of _bad_ things to say about the Gorillaz. Like, it involved research and everything. And _still, _the worst I could come up with is that Murdoc is growing old (albeit nowhere _near_ nursing home age; that's just Wurzel being a major dick) and 2D is (or at least pretends to be) a bit thick. …I officially declare this an insult fail XD

But, anyway, **a big thank you to Sebastian Sebastians, SheWhoWonders, HoloXam, melianatara, Morte Candy, **and **Drauph, **my wonderful reviewers. Love you guys!


	12. I Mean It Must Be High Or Low

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

_This is it. We're going. We're going to New York. We're going to be on a talk show that's broadcast internationally. This is amazing. This is more than I could have ever hoped for. This is…_

The young man stopped his rambling thoughts and smiled slightly to himself. If he were thinking about it, _really _thinking about it, it probably should've occurred to him to worry that maybe his new, clear thinking really _had_ only come from living on Plastic Beach, and these disjointed, rambling thoughts were proof that the intelligence was linked to his _staying_ on Plastic Beach.

But he was too happy to worry right now, so he filed it away, making a mental note to worry about it later.

It was getting late – the sky was quickly going from an explosion of warm color to the smooth, dark blue of nighttime. They were in the most expensive section of the plane, and most couldn't afford it, but there were four or five other passengers (all businessmen, he noted, probably CEOs for high-end companies). Most of them were fast asleep, and it startled him how these men in expensive, designer suits could look so prestigious and businesslike while awake and like innocent, slumbering children while asleep.

Murdoc was typing away on his laptop – blogging, most likely – while the android leafed through a gun magazine and occasionally glanced out the window at the cities looking so small far below them.

2D, for just a minute, wished he were the one sitting next to Murdoc. Sure, he'd probably be getting yelled at for stuff he didn't do and hit for no good reason every few minutes, but even that couldn't deter him from aching to be in Noodle-Bot's place. Of all the people he had ever been around, Murdoc was the one person who, whenever he was near him, he felt like he was where he belonged. He felt like he was home.

Pretty Rita suddenly shifted in the seat next to his, startling him (only testifying that his jumpiness, unlike his intelligence, was in no danger of being tied to Plastic Beach – if anything, he was even jumpier). He couldn't tell if she was sleeping or not due to her position – curled up in her seat with her head resting against her chest, messy, unkempt bangs falling forward and obscuring her eyes – but whether she was slumbering or merely resting, she looked more relaxed than she had all day.

In fact, she looked more relaxed that she had since he'd _met_ her.

In perfect correlation with that thought, she let a soft whimper escape her lips, then readjusted herself into a sitting position, rubbing her eye with the heel of one hand in an almost childlike fashion.

He offered a small smile, and she just barely returned it.

"How much longer?" she wanted to know.

"I dunno. Four, five more hours?" he guessed. She winced but didn't comment. Reflexively, her hand went to her pocket and brushed over something rectangular hidden beneath the fabric of her shorts, and then she leaned back, pressing her foot up against the back of the vacant seat in front of her.

She sighed softly, absentmindedly drumming her fingers on her t-shirt-clad abdomen, staring up at the ceiling – or, more precisely, the bottom of the luggage compartment – with an unreadable expression on her face.

Unreadable, but definitely expressing some deep thinking, and 2D decided to let her be, returning to gazing out the window. The sky was thoroughly dark now, the stars sparkling, looking so close to his window that he thought maybe he could touch them, maybe they could hear them talking way up here.

He heard a soft '_pop!',_ and glanced over just in time to see her dump about six green-and-white capsules into her hand, and then dry-swallow them, every last one of them, in one barely audible gulp.

He watched her shoulders rise and fall awkwardly as she breathed choppily – the way to get particularly strong painkillers to get into your bloodstream quicker, he noted, recalling on his own experience with them. It was all so familiar – the slight droop of her eyelids, the little tremor that went all through her body when it really kicked in (and strange, he mused, how you hardly even feel that when _you're_ the one taking the drugs, despite how violent it looked from an outside observer), the way her breaths came slower and farther apart until she was barely breathing at all.

She let a soft laugh escape her lips, but it held no humor – it was just as unnerving as an ear-shattering scream in that it sounded so _involuntary, _like it had clawed its way up her throat and fought its way through her lips.

He thought he was going to be sick. He'd always been the one flying out of his mind; never before had he seen what a painkiller high looked like from the _outside._ How could something that felt so _good_ look so _nightmarish?_

Instinct kicking in, he placed a hand on her shoulder, swallowing a gag when he felt her entire body just barely trembling, "P-Pretty Rita? Are you…are you okay?"

"I'm _flying,_" she whispered, her voice raspy, "and I'm _not_ lonely_. Not lonely at all_."

He pulled his hand back as if her shoulder were made of acid, which was ironic considering he could actually _taste_ acid in his mouth. He pushed past her and ran to the bathroom, falling to his knees and emptying his stomach into the toilet, vomiting again and again until his throat felt like it had come in contact with a cheese grater and his stomach muscles felt like they'd encountered a taffy puller.

Once he was done being repulsed, a whole new emotion hit him: _empathy. _Anyone who preferred _that_ to facing reality had to have a _seriously_ fucked up life – he'd been there, he _knew._ To be honest (and he shuddered at the very idea, but it had to be acknowledged), if it hadn't been for Shane Lynch back at his dad's funfair helping him through the detox process, that'd probably be _him_ out there, babbling to himself, completely oblivious to everyone pulling away until they were completely alone.

_No, _he decided, _she __**won't**__ be alone, because __**I'm**__ not going to leave her. I had Shane and…and she'll have me. I'll help her. I'll fix her. _

He rinsed his mouth with water from the bathroom sink. It tasted sulfurous and bitter, but it was better than the taste of stale vomit. He slid the door open and walked back to his seat. Pretty Rita now had headphones on, and was snoring softly, lips twitching and forming unspoken words.

He sat down next to her and grasped her hand firmly to make up for lurching away before, whispering, "It'll be alright, darling," until his own eyelids were too heavy to hold up, and he drifted into dreamless slumber.

/

"Wake up. Wake _up_, 2D! Alright, Sunbeam, I'm not playing around – wake up _now _or you fly on to Washington!"

His faintly bruised eyelids finally blinked open, looking up at an unhappy green-tinted face only a few inches from his own. With a satisfied smirk, Murdoc tossed 2D's suitcase at him and backed off, allowing him to view the two females of their party. Noodle-Bot had her arms crossed and was leaning against one of the seats, passing perfectly for an irritated teenager. Pretty Rita, on the other hand, looked vaguely amused, and, to 2D's relief, _much_ more sober. Sure, her eyes still looked faintly glassy and distanced, but, well, she wasn't spouting off nonsense, so she'd at least improved from last night.

She offered him a hand and he took it, allowing her to pull him to his feet, and the four of them left the plane.

"Thank you for flying with us!" the flight attendant called as they passed. Murdoc winked at her. She pretended not to see, prompting Murdoc to launch into a lengthy spiel of "Doesn't know what she's missing" and "If she knew who I was" that nobody even bothered to pretend to be listening to.

It was raining; nothing too bad, just a light shower, but they were all soaked by the time they got into the taxi nonetheless.

The air conditioning in the taxi combined with the thoroughly dampened clothes clinging to his slim frame ended up with 2D shivering, wrapping his arms around himself in an attempt to lock in some body heat.

The production of body heat was debatable in 2D's case, but due to lack of space, 2D's wet, slender thigh was pressed so hard against Murdoc's that it was almost painful, except that it wasn't, and Murdoc ended up feeling his own body heat up in a very pleasant and _very_ inconvenient way.

Due to sheer desperation and willpower, he just barely managed to keep _certain_ parts of his anatomy from reacting. Nobody could say he wasn't determined, after all.

"We're staying _here?_" Pretty Rita cried, eyes the size of saucers as she stared at the massive, expensive-looking hotel that the taxi had come to a halt in front of.

"Welcome to the celebrity life," Murdoc replied, tossing a handful of bills at the taxi driver as he slid out of the taxi without even looking at the meter, never one to miss a chance to show off his extensive wealth.

The four of them entered the hotel, and even Murdoc had to admit he was quite impressed – mural painted on the ceiling, crystals on the chandelier making little shards of light scatter across the shiny marble floor. There was a couch and a few chairs that wouldn't look out of place in a palace, a glass coffee table with gold accents, and a gorgeous grand piano, complete with a tuxedo-clad pianist playing Mozart.

Murdoc eventually blinked back to the issue at hand and excused himself from the group, heading over to the front desk to check them in.

"I didn't even know places like this even _existed_ anymore," Pretty Rita breathed.

2D put an affectionate arm around her shoulders. She raised her eyebrows at him, but he was preoccupied watching Noodle-Bot run her thumb absentmindedly over the handle of a kitchen knife tucked into waistband – or, at least, that was what he intended it to _look_ like he was doing; he was really just avoiding eye contact. Pretty Rita stood there, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, before the need to _get the fuck away_ became too much to ignore, and she "politely" shrugged his arm off and joined Murdoc at the front desk without even looking up.

But she _had_ let him touch her – even if only for a minute – and 2D took that as a good sign; she wasn't _completely_ opposed to the _entire_ human race. There was hope yet.

"Oi! _Dullard! _Stop smiling at your feet and come here!" Murdoc called. 2D flinched, but did as he was told. Murdoc pushed a thin piece of plastic into his hand, and 2D examined it. Room key for room D102.

Noodle-Bot reached for hers, but Murdoc shook his head. "I don't know if that's such a good idea."

"How else will I enter my room?" Noodle-Bot demanded.

"Pretty Rita's got a key to your room, she can let you in," Murdoc replied.

"I do not want to rely on the _captive_ to access my room," Noodle-Bot snapped. Apparently a bit too loudly, since the man at the front desk gave them an alarmed glance, one hand reaching for the phone.

Murdoc gave a plainly phony laugh and insisted, "She didn't say _captive! _ She said, uh…flschlaptive!"

"Nice save, Dr. Seuss," Pretty Rita muttered. "Let's go before we get thrown out, yeah?"

Grumbling to himself, Murdoc agreed, and they entered the lift.

"This discussion is not over. I want a room key," Noodle-Bot growled.

"Promise you won't burn it?" Murdoc demanded.

"Promise."

"Or blow it up?"

"Promise."

"Or eat it?"

"Promise."

"Or force someone _else_ to eat it?"

"Murdoc!" the android groaned. "I can _handle_ it!"

Murdoc shrugged, "Well, what's the _worst_ that could happen?" and handed her the credit card-like key.

They arrived on Floor D and found their rooms fairly quickly. Pretty Rita opened the door to a room, and 2D went to follow her when Murdoc caught his arm.

"Ah, ah, ah. You really think I'm dumb enough to put a _thirty-one year old man_ in with _two teenaged girls?_" Murdoc snapped.

"I'm nineteen," Pretty Rita insisted.

"Yeah, well, that's still got 'teen' in it, now, doesn't it?" Murdoc replied.

"C'mon, Muds, you know I wouldn't do anything!" 2D pleaded.

"Yeah, _I_ do. The _paparazzi, _however, _don't,_" Murdoc grinned, "so you're with me, _roomie."_

2D glanced at his younger, blonder, more female (though, admittedly, only in anatomy) friend, who merely shrugged, before replying, "Fine by me," and following Murdoc down the hall, heart beating like a hummingbird's, loudly enough that he worried that Murdoc could hear it. Murdoc, however, was much more focused on the increasing tightness of his already quite tight pants.

They met eyes as Murdoc opened the door to the room, and they both thought the same thing: _"This could get quite interesting."_

/

**Final Thoughts: **You know what isn't the best idea? Writing about people riding on an airplane _when you've never been on an airplane before._ Results in some pretty bad writers' block, and a chapter you're not too proud of – so damn _choppy!_

But, anyway, **I don't own Shane Lynch**, who actually was mentioned in 'Rise of the Ogre' as having worked at a fairground that 2D's dad owned and befriending 2D. Didn't say he stopped him from taking painkillers, but hey, artistic license, right? **I don't own Mozart,** either, and wouldn't really want to own a dead dude anyway. I also **don't own Dr. Seuss, **who, for those unfamiliar, was a writer of children's books who was known for making up bizarre, nonsensical words. 'Flschlaptive' is a bit of a stretch even for him, though, but I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with 'captive', so I threw in some humor. Some un-funny humor. Bleh.

**Thanks to NaNa Nadia, skitzoism, melianatara, and SheWhoWonders, **my lovely reviewers!


	13. That Is You Can't, You Know, Tune In

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

The bedroom is, well, just as nice as the lobby would imply it would be, if not even better. The green-and-gold carpet feels soft beneath her bare toes, every bit as soft as she imagined that gigantic green-and-gold-quilted at-least-queen-sized bed will feel beneath her back when she curls up to sleep in it tonight. After weeks of sleeping on a black leather sofa in Murdoc's study that constantly reeked of weed, dirt, and, well, _leather_, good fucking _god, _it was taking every ounce of her not to leap headfirst onto it right now, just like a little kid.

She's trying hard to hear what's going on in the hallway, but the walls are completely soundproof and all she can hear is the air conditioning humming as it pumps cool air into the room.

"I hope 2D's alright," she mutters.

She thought she said it quietly, under her breath, but apparently not out of the cyborg's hearing range, because she's answered by that can-opener feminine voice when the words are just barely out of her mouth. "He will be fine," the android insists, sounding bored, like a mother having to tell a toddler over and over why the sky is blue or why the sun goes down at night, some seemingly simple fact that sends a toddler's mind for a total loop. "Murdoc will not hurt him. He loves him."

_Love. _It sounds like a foreign language on Noodle-Bot's robotic, unfeeling tongue, and ever bit as foreign and strange in Pretty Rita's thoroughly human eardrums.

"Yeah, I know," Pretty Rita replies at last, tugging open the closet even though she doesn't really expect to find anything but hangers in there. "I know…that he loves him. But," she continues, strolling over to the window, tugging open the curtains to watch the rain slide down the glass of the window, obscuring her view of the busy street far below, "I mean, sometimes we hurt the ones we love more than anyone else."

"I do not understand what you are saying," Noodle-Bot informed her, sounding beyond irritated, 'Why is this girl even bothering to talk to me?' written plainly on her face. Pretty Rita doesn't answer, just stares down at the street, resting her hands on the windowsill as if she needed to hold herself up.

The android watched as the other girl took a few shaky breaths, and is momentarily worried that Pretty Rita might faint or vomit or do some other disgusting human thing, but then she turns away with a sudden smile on her face, says something about going for a walk, and practically runs out the door.

The cyborg just drops down onto the end of the bed, remote in hand, and doesn't give her roommate a second thought, for once actually living up to the 'uncaring robot' stereotype.

/

It's Murdoc that answers the door, of course, and he raises an eyebrow upon seeing her. "Here to complain about your roommate already? So much for that rough-and-tumble thing you had going for ya. Eh, well, it was nice while it lasted, I suppose."

"Yeah, yeah," Pretty Rita waved him off, "Where's 2D?"

Murdoc rolls his eyes, turns around and calls out, "Hey Sunbeam, your mommy's here to check up on ya!"

2D comes over, drying his hair with a fluffy white hotel towel with one hand, making it even messier and spikier than usual. "Oh. Hey. You okay?"

"Aw, how _sweet,_" Murdoc scoffed, turning around and walking back into the room.

"I'm fine," Pretty Rita tells him, her tone indicating her confusion at the question, but she continues on nonetheless. "I was just thinking…I mean, we've been stuck on Plastic Beach for months now, and now we're in fucking _New York City, _and, well, as nice as this hotel is, I really don't want to spend our short little burst of freedom here, when there's a whole city out there. So what do you say? You in?"

"Uh…," He glances over his shoulder at Murdoc, rolling a lit cigarette between his index finger and thumb, eyes glued to the TV screen but clearly listening in. There's no disapproval in his expression, though, only curiosity, so 2D says yeah, and Pretty Rita smiles and he's starting to think this whole detox thing might be easier than he thought.

Humoring him, 2D turns and calls over to Murdoc, "I'm going with Pretty Rita, okay?"

Murdoc smirks, putting on a faux-strict paternal voice, "Alright, sonny, but be back by ten thirty or you're grounded for a month!"

Pretty Rita smirks back, retorting, "What, can't sleep without him?"

Murdoc glares, and Pretty Rita sing-songs, "Just kidding!" with a little glint in her eyes that says she's not being a facetious as she claims, but then grabs 2D's wrist and pulls him along with her, barely giving him enough time to call out a "Bye!" before they're gone and Murdoc's alone.

He takes a long drag on the cigarette and blows it out in little rings to avoid saying something paternal like "Take an umbrella" or "Wear a jacket" or something sappy like "Be careful." He doesn't know if he regrets it or not until it's too late. He counters this by opening up the 'Adult Content' menu and trying to convince himself that his roommate leaving is a _good_ thing.

It doesn't work, but by then 'Skater Bait' is playing on the screen and he's suitably distracted.

For then.

/

It's stopped raining, which is actually kind of weird considering it was raining about fifteen minutes ago, but hey, they're not complaining. Pretty Rita is trying not to look excited and tourist-y but her eyes give away that she's about as ecstatic and enthralled as a little kid at Disney World.

He can't decide whether that's really adorable or extremely sad, considering she's nineteen and never been out of a suburb in Massachusetts. Probably both.

After some discussion, they agree on going to Times Square. It's just getting dark, so it's the perfect time to experience the full effect. They walk a few more blocks and he can tell she's clearly not used to all this walking and really starting to hurt.

"Taxi?" he offers, but she doesn't have any cash on her and refuses to have him pay the entirety of the taxi fare. She says the same about the subway at first, but relents once she finds out how cheap it is.

They're sitting on a bench, waiting, when 2D notices two high school girls whispering and pointing at them. At first, he just assumes it's because they either look like tourists or just plain bizarre, and then he realizes in a panic that he forgot his sunglasses back at the hotel. He usually wears them when he's not trying to attract paparazzi, since there really aren't many guys walking around with bright blue hair and fully black eyes. He looks down and lowers his eyelids, trying to hide.

It clearly doesn't work, though, because suddenly they're standing there, one girl giggling hysterically while her friend is barely retaining her excitement as she asks, "Are you who I think you are?"

It isn't until after he's dumbly said "No," that he remembers oh, yeah, people around here don't have English accents and he should've just kept his mouth shut. They both squeal and explode in a rush of questions and exclamations of delight, and pretty soon one of them pulls a pink Sharpie out of her purse and he's signing her arm, and then he's signing the other girl's stomach, and then the first girl is taking the Sharpie back and writing her phone number on the back of his hand, and the second girl looks like she might pass out, and his head is spinning from all the commotion.

Pretty Rita feels about as awkward as one can feel, like she's intruding, which is ridiculous because she was the one who was with 2D in the first place, but even with that knowledge, the feeling stays.

When 2D finally says, "Train's here," she's never been happier to hear the screeching of tires on rails.

The two girls are suddenly silent. Their eyes meet – trying to be secretive about it and failing, trying to keep their expressions neutral but the curve of their mouths and the crease between their brows give it away, give away that they are perplexed and horrified that beautiful 2D has this homely girl as his companion. They're classy enough not to say anything, though, at least not while she's still within earshot. She isn't masochistic enough to look behind her once they're on the train.

For a Friday evening in New York City, the subway is pretty empty. Granted, Pretty Rita's only seen it in movies, but there's the faintest hint of wrongness in the air, setting her on edge.

On pure instinct, her hand goes for the little black cylinder in her pocket. Her mind is somewhere else until a large, warm hand wraps around her wrist, stopping her. She hisses and tears out of the hand's grip, whipping her head to the side fast enough to give herself whiplash, anger and confusion mixing in her too-bright too-bloodshot eyes.

2D freezes, then drops his hand onto his leg. "Uh…security cameras," he mutters, jerking his head toward the nearest one.

"Oh," Pretty Rita replies, swallowing audibly and folding her hands in her lap. Her wrist burns for a long while despite the fact that he'd only held her for about three seconds. Burns in a weird way, a way that's neither painful nor pleasant. She rubs her middle and index fingers over the sharp bone on the side once 2D looks away. She can barely feel her own touch. It's like she's actually been burned – the skin is almost unreceptive to feeling, but it feels hot, still, feels hot in a way that she can feel on the inside as well as feel in her fingers as she touches the skin.

"We're here," 2D tells her, and she jumps, startled, before pulling herself to her feet using the metal pole and following him out the sliding doors and into the station. They climb the stairs and emerge on the city street. It's gotten darker in the time they've been underground, but she barely notices because everything, _everything_ is lit up with bright, fluorescent colors. There are TV screens at least five times bigger than her house, there are huge, lit-up billboards everywhere she looks, there are theatres and every store she's ever heard of and quite a few that she hasn't, and _is she even breathing? Is her heart even beating? Does she even __**care?**_

"Oh my god," she breathes.

"Pretty cool, yeah?" 2D smiles.

"It's a long way from Wooder Mills, Massachusetts," Pretty Rita laughs, her lungs just barely keeping up. 2D laughs, too, even though he's never actually seen Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, but he doesn't need to; he knows it's true. There's really not much that can compare to Times Square.

"So, what do you want to do?" he queries.

"God, _everything!" _she gasps, and he smiles.

"Well, in that case, I hope Murdoc was kidding about the whole ten o'clock curfew thing," 2D grins, and Pretty Rita laughs so hard she gets a stitch in her side, and she's not sure whether she's laughing because she's lost it or because it's funny or because her head is spinning and she can't properly think, but right then, she doesn't care.

She just laughs until she gets lightheaded.

And then she laughs some more.

/

**Final Thoughts: **Uh…yeah. Sorry for making you wait sixteen days for a new chapter. This actually isn't all I wanted to put in this one – it was going to be _monstrously _long, but I figured I'd made you wait long enough. So…you're welcome? Ha-ha.

Thank you's go to the following: **Drauphner, melianatara, HoloXam, SheWhoWonders, xxSay, **and **Mazda Tha Crazy, **who gets a double thank you for reviewing me **twice in a row!** THANK YOU!

And now, for my I-don't-want-to-get-sued list: **I don't own 'Skater Bait', **which I'm hoping I don't get banned for posting here either, as it's an actual porno in real life. Alright, here – **I don't advise you guys go looking up 'Skater Bait' because it's porn and porn is wrong. Stay in school and eat your vegetables. **There ya go. **I don't own Times Square, **either, but if I did, I wouldn't be sitting here in my pajamas eating graham crackers, now, would I?

**Reviews are very much requested! I still reply to every last one of them, and I still accept anonymous reviews!**


	14. But It's Alright

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

Murdoc doesn't dare look at the clock when he hears giggling in the hallway, and makes an effort to look completely engrossed in the stupid reality show on TV when he hears the door open.

He catches the very end of Pretty Rita's question, which ends with, "…asleep?"

It's pretty open-ended until 2D replies with, "No, he's awake," and then it'd take an idiot to misunderstand.

"Sneaking into your own hotel room? Bit pathetic in my book, but hey, to each their own," Murdoc sneers, watching the girl on TV flip out about a stolen energy bar, despite the fact that you could see a whole box of energy bars on the counter behind her.

Ignoring Murdoc completely, Pretty Rita stretches, lacing her fingers together and reaching towards the ceiling, resulting in an audible crack. She sighs out an, "Ahhhh," and then turns to 2D with, "I'm whipped. See you in the morning, yeah?"

"Sounds good," 2D replies, and then grabbed her and pulled her into a hug, so suddenly and unexpectedly that it nearly caused her to topple over. She catches herself, but only by wrapping her arms around his abdomen. The hug doesn't last more than three minutes; she pats him on the back awkwardly, then fights her way out and heads for the door.

Once it clicks shut, Murdoc asks, "So, how was your night on the town with your girlfriend?"

"She's not my girlfriend," 2D replies as he unlaces his shoe at the edge of his bed, "I mean, yeah, she's a _girl, _and she's my _friend, _but she's not…"

"Ever heard the phrase 'Don't explain the joke', Faceache?" Murdoc answers, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye.

"Yeah," 2D answers good-naturedly, tugging off his other shoe, tossing it into the corner, and lying down on his stomach in one smooth motion. "So, what're you watching? _'Girls Gone Wild'_?"

"I wish," Murdoc replies. "No, turns out that once you watch 2 hours of adult content, the prices go up, and I'm not spending all my money on that garbage. So I'm stuck watching _this _garbage instead. The girls take their tops off at every occasion, but the bastards censor it just to spite me."

"Sucks," 2D halfheartedly agrees. He shifts on the bed, and the sound of the rustling blankets makes Murdoc instinctively glance over. His position looks a bit like what he'd expect from a teen girl in one of those awful teen flicks in that mandatory Talking on the Phone Scene – he's halfheartedly kicking his bare feet in the air, his chin resting in the palm of one hand while his other arm lies flat on the bed, his hand resting on the crook of his raised arm.

It's…_cute, _Murdoc decides, and at the same time, there's something about the slight curling of his toes and the way his hair brushes his slightly-flushed cheeks that has the oddest way of being slightly alluring. And that in itself – the fact that the younger male can _obliviously _be tantalizing – is undeniably attractive as well.

"Satan, 2D, could you _be_ any prettier?" Murdoc says before his mind can fully process the words, and once his mind catches up with his tongue, his eyes widen and his cheeks turn bright red.

2D glances at him over his shoulder and shrugs. "I dunno. I've never tried to be any prettier before," he replies, and then returns to watching TV like nothing happened.

Murdoc is too busy being relieved to notice the pink spot on each of the blunette's cheeks and the small, satisfied smile playing across his lips.

/

When Pretty Rita pushed open the door to her room, she was surprised to find Noodle-Bot lying on the bed with her eyes closed.

"I didn't know she slept," Pretty Rita mused.

And then jumped a mile when the "sleeping" android snapped, "I am not sleeping. I do not require sleep," but it lacked her usual malice. "I am merely running a bit low on energy, so I am attempting to conserve it by minimizing exertion."

"Oh," Pretty Rita answered, then frowned. "So you didn't bring, like…a portable charger or anything?"

"Portable 'charger,'" Noodle-Bot scoffed, "No, for I am not a cellular phone. I installed a _power cord_ that can be plugged into a wall outlet, but I cannot plug it in myself."

"Oh," Pretty Rita repeated. "Do you need my help, then? 'Cause I could…"

"I am not low enough to request assistance from a human, and certainly not low enough to request assistance from a captive!" Noodle-Bot growled.

"Fine," Pretty Rita snapped back, "well please _excuse_ me for trying to be nice, Your Highness. If you'd rather let yourself drain all of your energy than let me help you, I assure you that I'm not gonna stand in your way."

And with that, Pretty Rita grabbed her pajamas out of her suitcase and went into the bathroom to change without looking back.

When she came out, the cyborg's skin had turned grey, and she was pretty sure she could see some wires and circuitry underneath her flesh. Pretty Rita tried her best not to look at her, but it was _creepy._ Even if the android was, well, an android, she still looked just like a teenaged girl, and right then, like a _dying_ teenaged girl.

Thankfully, Pretty Rita didn't have to worry much longer, because Noodle-Bot finally stated, "Alright, human, I have deduced that it is in my best interests to allow you to plug my power cord into the wall."

"Oh, wow, you'll _allow_ me? I'm honored," Pretty Rita sneered, but her heart wasn't in it, and all anger quickly left her as she watched Noodle-Bot weakly get to her feet and pitifully stagger towards the wall.

Pretty Rita shifted awkwardly and asked, "So, uh, where's the…"

"In my chest," the android replied. "My main power box is where an organic human would have a heart, and it's connected to that."

"Oh," Pretty Rita replied, and then raised her eyebrows when the android grabbed the hem of her black tube top and pulled it off over her head in one swift movement. By instinct, Pretty Rita went to look away, but it turned out it wasn't needed. The android's chest was flat. Not small-breasted flat, just utterly _flat. _She was hourglass-shaped from her ribcage and down, but from her ribcage up it looked quite a bit like she had a cereal box underneath her skin – rectangular and flat and _weird. _

And just to add to the weirdness, the center of the cyborg's chest suddenly opened up, revealing a large, circular hole. A few seconds later, a plug pushed itself out with a bizarre whirring sound.

"You just need to grab it and plug it into the wall outlet. I will go into charge mode for the night. When you need me to awaken, just unplug the cord. It will jolt me into consciousness."

"Yeah, okay," Pretty Rita replied. In grabbing the plug, her finger brushed the cyborg's flesh, which unfortunately did indeed feel like actual flesh. And, in Pretty Rita's mind, made the whole ordeal feel much more intimate than she really wanted to get into, so she swiftly plugged the cord into the wall and watched as Noodle-Bot's eyes went dark with the same sound as an old computer powering down, then her eyelids shut with a click and she went limp, shoulders slumping, head dropping forward so that her chin rested on her collarbone.

"Alright then," Pretty Rita mused, "That'll spawn some _killer_ nightmares." And, with that, she slipped beneath the thick hotel blankets, sighing at the softness of the mattress and the warmth of the comforter, and rested her head on the super-soft feather pillow, letting her eyes fall closed.

If she had any dreams that night, she didn't remember them by morning. She counted that as a blessing.

/

About thirty minutes into some cop show, he realized that 2D had been oddly quiet for almost an hour now. Trying to be surreptitious, he glanced at the other bed out of the corner of his eye, only to find that his blue-haired companion had fallen asleep. One arm was serenely tucked behind his head, while the other lie on the bed, resting a few inches from his chest, his hand curled into a fist and tucked beneath his chin. He hadn't changed out of his clothes before conking out, and was therefore still dressed in a pale green '_Postal Service' _t-shirt and a pair of distressed skinny jeans with a hole in the right knee. As Murdoc watched, he shifted slightly, causing the t-shirt to slide upwards, exposing several inches of smooth, pale skin.

Robotically, he slid off his bed and stood in the small gap between his bed and 2D's. There was the strangest sense of déjà vu, taking him back a few months ago when he stood in that underwater prison cell, listening to the waves crashing far above them as he watched the pretty boy sleep.

Mimicking what he'd done back then, he reached over and lightly swept a few strands of hair out of the man's face. 2D sighed serenely, and a small smile crept across Murdoc's lips. He remembered years and years ago, when the man was little more than a boy, lying on the hospital bed, bruises covering his slender body. And even _then, _as he watched the comatose man pull in air, watched the life drain from the man a little bit more every day, there had been that little twist, that tugging somewhere beneath his ribs that felt so very _wrong_ and yet so perfect, pure, untainted.

And he'd spent all this time unconsciously hiding it, covering it up like an acne-ridden teenager unleashing makeup on their irritated pores. Tucking it away, locking it up, hiding behind halfhearted insults and punches so he could claim that twinge was just a bit of guilt, that last bit of humanity yet to die.

Murdoc bit his lip hard enough for it to bruise, and then, acting on pure impulse, ran his fingers lightly along the bit of skin where 2D's shirt had ridden up. 2D audibly gasped, his eyelids twitching, and he rolled onto his back, causing his shirt to ride up even further, now falling a few inches above the bottom of his strangely visible ribcage.

Up close, there were dozens of white lines scattered along the pale skin. They were close enough to his skin tone that they would be invisible to your average onlooker, but up close they were painfully obvious. He traced a particularly bad-looking one that zigzagged along one of the singer's hips. It was at least two inches wide and stretched so long that Murdoc couldn't see either end of it – it traveled at least to the singer's back at the top end, and disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans at the other. Murdoc wondered what it could be from – a surgical procedure, perhaps? Car crash? Some incident at the fairgrounds? Murdoc refused to believe that any of his own unique brand of offhand violence could have resulted in _that. _He would've noticed, right? It must have bled quite a bit to leave a scar like that…

The burning guilt wouldn't leave, so Murdoc let the scar be and instead curved his hand around 2D's side and followed the curve as it went inwards once his hips ended, and then outwards at his ribcage – a perfect hourglass. The skin was smooth, soft, and feverishly warm, and Murdoc couldn't believe how much _want_ he felt. He ran his index finger from the middle of 2D's ribs down to just above his navel, his nail pressing close enough to the skin to give the man goosebumps, but not enough to scratch. 2D tilted his head back and moaned softly, causing Murdoc's stomach to do somersaults.

And then 2D suddenly came back to consciousness. For a brief minute, Murdoc pondered the notion of just letting himself be caught, of acting like it was no big deal, like it was every bit as good and natural as it felt, but his backed out at the last second, pulling his hand away like a child caught in the cookie jar.

"Mmm," 2D murmured, rubbing one eye and blinking up at Murdoc. "What's going on? My stomach feels weird."

Murdoc swallowed. "Nothing."

Oh, _crap._ Every half-rate liar knows that 'nothing' is the absolute _worst_ answer you can give to that question, because there's no possible _way_ you could be doing _nothing at all._

2D raised his eyebrows. "Then why are you just standing there looking at me?"

"I'm not just standing here looking at you, idiot; I'm trying to wake you up. You fell asleep with those stupid girly jeans on – they'll make weird lines on your skin and the wardrobe department will give you hell for it once we get to the studio and then I'll have to hear about you whine about it the whole ride back!"

"Oh," 2D answered. "I guess that makes sense. Thanks, Murdoc!"

"Yeah, yeah," Murdoc replied. "Get changed, get in bed, and shut up. Stupid plane ride made me tired."

"Okay," 2D grinned, hopping off the bed and tugging off his t-shirt. Murdoc glanced at him just in time to see him kick off his jeans, revealing his perfectly round, pale arse and also confirming Murdoc's suspicions that the singer went commando more often than not.

2D called out a cheerful, "G'night, Muds!" but Murdoc was too busy cursing fate to come up with a coherent response.

/

**Final Thoughts: **Jeez. This took me forever to write. I seriously started the day I posted the last chapter, worked on it every single day, and it _still_ took me forever.

(Is it just me, or is the scene with Android Noodle and Pretty Rita weirdly erotic? It was supposed to come off creepy, and yet it has this weird sexual vibe to it that I swear I never wrote in…)

Anyway – **I don't own the energy bar tantrum, **that's from an early season of America's Next Top Model (the one with Kim Stolz), **I don't own '**_**Girls Gone Wild**_**', **which 2D thought Murdoc was watching, and **I don't own **_**'Postal Service'**_**, **which is what it says on 2D's t-shirt (and is also a really great band._ 'This Place is a Prison'_ is particularly amazing.)

Thank you to **melianatara, SheWhoWonders, julietdeannabartlett, Kotome Yubake Shimizu, xxSay, **and my first anonymous reviewer, the appropriately named** Anonymous.**

And a message to xxSay – to answer your question, the cylinder in her pocket was the film canister she keeps her pills in. Sorry, I thought I stated that in the chapter, but I guess I didn't XD


	15. That Is I Think It's Not Too Bad

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

Pretty Rita wasn't exactly sure what to expect to find when she hustled backstage, but she'd expected it to be completely different from anything she'd ever seen. Professional talk show? Definitely not anything like something you'd find around some small town in Massachusetts, right?

Well, she was yet to see the actual stage, but backstage really wasn't all that different from the backstage area of the theatre at her old high school. A few more doors, sure, and a lot more people rushing up and down the hallway with determined looks on their faces and hands-free phones at their ears, but really nothing fancy. In fact, for a minute, she expected _him_ to come running up to her, black smudges down his cheeks and raccoon-like circles around his eyes, which were a bit more bloodshot than usual, cursing the name of liquid eyeliner. Expected to have to take him by the hand and spend the next thirty minutes fighting to get waterproof eyeliner off his face and getting him to hold still and stop flinching and _well if you hadn't been moving all over the place it wouldn't have gotten in your eye_ until he had two perfect lines across his eyelids and a complexion clear of dark smears and a _thank you _expression as he rushed off to the stage just in time for the opening scene.

But no, of course not. This wasn't Wooder Mills, this wasn't a high school production of _'RENT', _this was real life in New York City, and god_damn _she wanted to duck into the bathroom and just down a whole canister of pills, but instead she took a breath and pushed the beaded curtain away and walked down the hall like she was a normal girl who didn't have her thoughts swirling around her head like a very violent tornado.

A notably _quite_ busty young woman in a blue tuxedo jacket and matching pencil skirt came rushing up, "Murdoc, thank god. You're late, you know."

"Whatever," Murdoc muttered, and then out of the corner of his eye happened to see the backstage film crew, filming for the 'behind the scenes' segment that went on the official _'Angie'_ website.

It was like watching a butterfly emerge from a cocoon, except far more bitter and revolting.

Murdoc got a gleam in his eyes, a kind of bloodlust, and pulled the busty woman to his side and, in a rather filthy tone, sneered, "Look here, darling – the Niccals is never late. Know why?" Here he grinned – no, _leered_ – at the camera, "Cause nothing starts 'til Murdoc Niccals arrives!"

Pretty Rita blinks up at 2D, who shakes his head so slightly she almost thought she imagined it. They walk down a connected hallway, just barely out of view from Murdoc and the cameras, and 2D sighs, leans against the wall, pushes a stray lock of blue out of his eyes and stares into hers.

"He changed. Like he always does." He says it like a TV doctor delivering bad news – that sort of hopeless, 'we-did-all-we-could' tone. "He never used to be like that, though. He used to be real cool when the cameras showed up – laughing and joking around, teasing me and Russ and pretending to translate for Noodle but saying stuff she'd never say in a million years and pissing Russ off and making the rest of us laugh. But…" He glances out at the hallway as Murdoc laughs overenthusiastically. "But the more famous we got, the more he developed this…this _role. _Like he was an actor on some awful sitcom, playing the insolent jerk. And pretty soon, it wasn't just in front of cameras – anytime we were around anyone who wasn't one of us, he turned into this stupid stuck-up twat."

Pretty Rita offered, "So call him out on it."

2D shook his head sadly, "It wouldn't do any good. It's just the way things are – the camera changes you. No matter who you are, how great a person you are in real life, the camera will invariably turn you into something you aren't."

Pretty Rita opened her mouth to say something, but one of the crew appeared then to take her away, "Hey, Pretty Rita? Yeah, you got to get to wardrobe, like, now."

She looked up at 2D for a moment, then followed the crewman out of the hallway and out of sight.

_The camera will invariably turn you into something you aren't. _2D kicked at an imaginary pebble on the tiled floor. Murdoc's voice floated in from the hallway, not close enough to make out actual words, but the faux-uninterested tone came in loud and clear.

2D swallowed hard and walked off, heart beating like a hummingbird's, full of confusion and anger and emotions he couldn't even _name. _

Murdoc wanted to be seen as uninterested.

And 2D, more than anything, wanted to truly be.

/

The backstage area might _resemble_ the one she remembered from school plays, but the dressing room just jerked her right back to cruel, cruel reality.

Dressing rooms during plays were always absolutely _full_ of other girls. You really couldn't even move without ending up pressed against the girl next to you, but it wasn't as bad as it sounded. All those girls she never even spoke to during school suddenly became like really close sisters; zipping up dresses or lacing up corsets or doing makeup for one another. There was always a heavy scent of a million different shampoos and deodorants and perfumes mixing together in the air, which would seem unpleasant to an outsider, and it sounded pretty nasty to her even now, but back then it was downright intoxicating.

And now…now she was alone. Well, not _completely, _since Robo-Noodle stood at the opposite end of the room, but it felt like total isolation.

Well, she mused, at least there was none of that whole awkwardness thing with undressing. She glanced over at the android, who didn't seem to even have noticed her yet, before sighing softly and tugging her baggy _'Regular Show' _t-shirt off over her head, quickly followed by the faded board shorts that were hanging awkwardly off her hips.

She intended to undress and redress as quickly as possible, but somehow her reflection caught her eye and stopped her dead in her tracks.

It was the strangest feeling of being outside her own body. She couldn't even remember the last time she looked in a mirror when she wasn't wearing clothes designed to perfectly hide the fact that, no, she actually _wasn't _built like a cardboard box, thank you very much.

Her body was far from 'sexy' or even really 'inviting', but it was adequate, which was more than she was used to believing to be the case. Her chest was rather small, her hips not too wide, her stomach displaying a slight bump of body fat. But she wasn't obscenely overweight or, on the other end of the spectrum, disgustingly skinny.

She was _average._ She was _normal._

And she'd never been happier to say so.

/

2D was just finishing buttoning up his shirt when Murdoc came in, muttering something under his breath. 2D opted to just ignore the muttering, but it stopped almost instantly once Murdoc noticed that the 'empty' dressing room wasn't so empty after all.

"Oh," Murdoc awkwardly stated. "I, uh, didn't realize anyone else would be in here."

"Yeah," 2D answered, just as awkwardly. "Well, um, I figured since you wouldn't let me share a room with the girls you wouldn't be too happy with me changing with them, so I opted for the men's dressing room instead."

Murdoc nodded absently. "Uh, yeah. Great."

2D muttered, "I was kidding," under his breath and began brushing his hair flat in preparation for the ski cap lying on the counter.

Murdoc shrugged. "Okay." Then, becoming more animated, "They really need to get some more competent people in the costume department here. I mean, really – is asking to have a decent outfit in the proper size _really_ such an issue?"

2D bit his lip and opted not to reply.

Murdoc, not exactly taking the hint, continued, "Eh, well, the broad had some pretty awesome hooters, so I let her off easy. Just gave her a little verbal roughing-up, yeah? Betcha she'll be following me back to the hotel tonight – she was eyeing me up something good."

2D tried to keep the words in, really, he did, but they came pouring out anyway, he whirled around on Murdoc and just let go, "She was _not! _Not every single female on this damn _planet_ wants you, okay? And you know what the worst part is? You _know! _You're just playing this stupid game where you find this stupid fucking _role_ to play and…and I'm _sick of it! _You were never this way in the beginning, and you sure as hell were never like this back on the island! So just…just _stop it! _Okay? Just _knock it the fuck off!"_

Murdoc was across the room faster than you could blink, slamming 2D against the counter, hands pinning his slender wrists to the countertop with the edge of the counter digging into his lower back.

"You…" Murdoc snarled, "You little…"

He was going to beat some sense into the younger male. That was his intention, anyway. But somehow the shock and fear in 2D's eyes no longer made him high. It just made him…depressed, in a way. It was like a brutal wake-up call.

And then Murdoc became further aware of their position. Murdoc's leg had ended up between both of 2D's, not too far at all from being somewhere _really_ inappropriate, Murdoc's hands were dangerously close to 2D's hips, and their lips were about two inches from touching.

2D was breathing heavily. Whether that was from arousal, shock, fear, or the fact that he was just plain out-of-breath from his prior tantrum, Murdoc couldn't be sure. Hell, _2D_ wasn't even sure. But Murdoc could feel that 2D's heart was beating rapidly, going by the pulse in his wrist, and Murdoc's own heart was hammering in his chest like a hummingbird's.

2D swallowed nervously, and Murdoc's stomach twisted almost painfully at the wave of arousal that swept through him. He knew he should back away, or shove the other male aside, or _something._ And yet all he could think about was how easy it would be to just press his mouth against the blunette's, to find out once and for all what the pretty boy tasted like.

"We, uh," Murdoc stammered, "we should finish getting ready. We've got that, um, thing. In a minute. Or…you know."

2D licked his lips and replied, "Yeah, you're, um…you're probably right."

But neither of them moved.

Finally, 2D's thoroughly impulsive mind couldn't fight off the urge to follow his instinct any longer. In about the course of a fraction of a second, he switched the position of his hands so he was holding Murdoc's wrists, and pulled the older man closer.

He pressed himself against him…

Let his eyelids droop closed…

Rested one hand on the other man's shoulder…

And finally, _finally_ gave in and kissed him.

/

**Final Thoughts: **Sorry this took so long, guys. I don't really have a decent excuse, honestly. I've just been kinda lazy lately. Ah well. After a chapter like _this_, I'm thinking you guys will forgive my laziness, yeah? XD

I actually hadn't planned that ending, but I'm starting to get a little tired of scene after scene after scene of unresolved sexual tension. Something had to happen for this chapter not to drive me completely crazy, and, well, I can't exactly say I didn't enjoy writing that particular scene.

**This chapter's disclaimers **include me **not owning **Broadway musical, which has also been adapted into a movie, **RENT,** as well as the new Cartoon Network show **'Regular Show'**, which I started out not even liking one bit and now can't stop watching. I'm fairly certain Cartoon Network's censors aren't even _looking_ at this show before airing it. Which, actually, is pretty awesome in my opinion.

**Thank you **to my reviewers for the last chapter, **opresiminya, julietdeannabartlett, knockplease, SheWhoWonders, xxSay, skitzoism, HoloXam, **and **Morte Candy.**


	16. Always, No, Sometimes I Think It's Me 1

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

The second 2D's lips came in contact with his, Murdoc's mind just went nuts.

Thoughts came pouring down on him like a torrential rain. He worried about who might see them and what they might think and what this might mean for the band and what this might mean for his sexuality and where 2D learned to kiss like that because _Satan_ he was good and…

And then somehow he figured out how to turn his brain off, to stop thinking and just _feel._

He pressed the pads of his fingertips against the sliver of skin exposed beneath the bottom of the black button-down shirt 2D wore and felt the smooth skin, felt the moan 2D made in the back of his throat when Murdoc's hands traveled up further, one hand resting at the small of his back and the other gently tracing over his ribcage. He felt 2D's arms wrapping tight around his neck, felt him press himself against him, felt the surge of satisfaction when he realized that he'd kissed the blunette to the point of making the kid's knees go weak and that was the reason for the sudden, desperate clinging.

2D's brain felt quite like it were on one of those carnival rides that spun like a top, the ones that he always avoided because he was sick to his stomach from the pills most of the time anyway and therefore didn't really need much help in the nausea department. He'd watch it, though, watch it for hours on end, let his eyes glaze over and just stare at the spinning and tilting, oftentimes completely forgetting where he was and who was around him until someone grabbed him by the wrist and asked where he'd been all this time and what did he want for dinner.

He never even knew it was possible to feel all this at once. It was weird, really, how it felt like his skin was on fire. He'd done this before. He'd done more than this, _much_ more than this, so much more that just trying to fathom what all he'd done and with whom made his head ache. But it had never felt like this before.

He tried to remember who it'd been with the last time. It was hard to say, really, been quite a while, and…

Oh yeah. Maybe _that _was why. God, he hadn't been touched like this who _knows_ how long. He hadn't really even felt another person's skin against his since he'd arrived on the island. His skin was crazily perceptive to every touch, every line on Murdoc's palms, and how it all just felt completely fucking _euphoric._

There was really no telling how long they might have stayed like this, but someone rapped on the door in a way that implied some kind of urgency, and Murdoc sighed, rolled his eyes, untangled himself from 2D and stepped away from the other male until he was at a family-friendly distance before calling, "Yeah? What do you want?"

A stagehand shoved the door open, "Where have you two been? We've been looking all over for you! The show starts in twenty minutes!"

The stagehand definitely didn't fit the whole skinny, eyeglasses-sporting, zit-covered teen idea. He was, in fact, a very large, muscular, burly man with a military haircut and a pair of dog tags around his neck.

Even Murdoc wasn't quite gutsy enough to mouth off to this guy (he'd had his nose broken enough times to last about six lifetimes, after all), so Murdoc kept his ordinary snarkiness under wraps and merely nodded briefly, "We'll be out in just a sec," and the stagehand pulled the door closed.

Murdoc glanced over at 2D. The younger male was holding onto the counter in order to keep upright, his head lowered so that his hair fell into his half-lidded eyes. His lips were swollen and red (a nice, deep, cherry red at that), and Murdoc wanted nothing more than to taste them again.

But he was under control now, having finally got his fix, and thinking more clearly – particularly about the muscular stagehand whose bad side he'd rather stay off of, thank you very much.

This time he meant it when he said, "We'd better go," and 2D nodded once, tugging his shirt into a more G-rated position.

Murdoc absentmindedly licked his lips and couldn't help but smile slightly when he tasted butterscotch.

/

Angelique Thibault was a very pretty individual. That was the first thing Pretty Rita noticed about her. Smooth, milky-white skin matched wonderfully with her flowing white-blond hair with the bangs cut that they fell ever-so-delicately into her wide, blue-grey eyes. She wore a light blue sweater with a pair of light brown corduroys, which, naturally, went perfectly together.

She also had a very attractive speaking voice, with the barest hint of a Scottish accent, and wasted no time in very attractively inviting them to sit on her very attractive pale blue couch.

"You all look lovely," she remarked, once Murdoc and 2D managed to figure out how to sit on a couch without being on top of one another, "Isn't our wardrobe department just fantastic here?"

Murdoc replied, "Yes," a split-second after she finished answering the question. 2D refrained from pointing out that the wardrobe department was worth bitching about not a half an hour ago and now had become fantastic, but 2D was trying very hard not to think about what went on in that dressing room in any way, shape, or form, so he kept quiet.

Soon they were fit with wireless microphones. Pretty Rita ended up having to do Noodle-Bot's, because apparently the android had something against the poor tech guy. Who she'd never met before. Pretty Rita had the natural urge to combat that, but the alternative to having an issue with the tech guy was that Noodle-Bot _didn't_ have an issue with _her_, and that was actually a hell of a lot scarier.

Then, out of the blue, there were people all over the stage, adjusting everything, and Pretty Rita suddenly felt very claustrophobic and she didn't know why.

Then, just as quickly as they'd all arrived, they all vanished.

"Ready?" someone called out.

"Whenever you are," Angelique replied.

And then someone counted down from five and suddenly they were being broadcast to every television set in the world.

/

**Final Thoughts: **This chapter will be split into two parts, because the interview is taking forever to write and I felt bad for making you all wait so long.

Hence why nothing really happens at all in this chapter. Sorry. The next one will be a lot better.

**Thanks **to my reviewers:** melianatara, Eronious, SheWhoWonders, xxSay, Drauph, HoloXam, CloudHop, WindAlias, **and** The Adversary.**


	17. Always, No, Sometimes I Think It's Me 2

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

_The setting is a large stage area, made to look like a very classy living room. There is a large fireplace in one corner, with a few knick-knacks lined up on the mantle. The walls are painted a soothing lavender, and make a sort of half-circle shape around the main stage. On said main stage, there is a large, pale blue armchair and a matching sofa. _

_Angelique Thibault occupies the armchair. She is a young woman, most likely in her mid-to-late twenties, and highly attractive. She wears a sky blue V-neck sweater with ¾ sleeves and a pair of tan corduroys. On her feet is a pair of tan backless clogs._

_Murdoc Niccals sits on the couch, closest to Angelique's armchair. He is clearly the oldest of the foursome, with age lines present on his face and a few silvery strands in his otherwise pitch-black hair. He sports a black '_Ozzy Osbourne'_ t-shirt, black and red Converse, and a pair of acid-wash grey jeans. A black tuxedo jacket has been added to the ensemble, adding a touch more class, but not much._

_Next to him sits Stuart "2D" Pot, a younger male with highly effeminate features. He is dressed in a black button-down shirt with the sleeves pushed up almost to his elbows, and a grey pinstriped vest. His grey jeans look quite painfully tight, just as the black dress shoes look very uncomfortable, but he shows no sign of discomfort._

_Beside him is a newcomer known only as "Pretty Rita." She is, for lack of a better term, quite obscure in appearance, which isn't helped by her permanent scowl. Her ensemble consists of a black camisole with lace along the straps and collar with a layered skirt made of a white eyelet material. She wears a pair of black-and-white striped leg warmers, but is, strangely enough, completely barefoot, with no footwear in sight._

_Last in the lineup is their robot guitarist. She is referred to by the name of their former guitarist, Noodle, and the appearance is almost identical, but their mannerisms are quite clearly different. She wears a blood red halter top that stops just below the bust, exposing a barbell through her navel with a dangling charm in the shape of a revolver. Her shorts are most likely the ones designed to be worn beneath skirts, not on their own, as they are obscenely tight and revealing. Her legs are mostly covered by a pair of clunky black combat boots that go up to her knees. _

_Angelique tucks a lock of white-blond hair behind her ear, smiles, and begins the interview._

**Angelique: **Well, let's start with the basics. You guys just entered Phase 3 – how does that feel?

**Murdoc: **It's a pretty big deal, in my opinion. I mean, like, not just because I'm part of it, though that's a pretty big deal, too, but…well, look at all those one-hit wonder kiddies running about the music business these days. It's a fairly big deal to make one successful album – and we've got at least three out there.

**2D: **Hey, you know…it's Phase 3, and we've released three albums. That's kind of a cool coincidence.

**Murdoc: **I'm…pretty sure that's the whole point.

**Angelique: **You've come out with some brilliant songs for this last album, I must say. How does your writing process go?

**Murdoc: **It's a very long, complicated ordeal, Angie – may I call you Angie? Is that good with you, sweetheart?

**Pretty Rita **_(to Noodle-Bot)_**: **Hey, you wouldn't happen to have an English-to-jerkass translator in that hard drive of yours? Run a translation on 'no chance in hell', if you would.

**Noodle-Bot: **I cannot detect the language you are searching for.

**Pretty Rita: **Probably because I was _kidding._

**2D: **…are you guys talking about me?

**Murdoc: **Anyway, as I was saying, lovely Angie…what was the question again?

**Angelique: **Let's just move on…

**Murdoc: **Well, I'm always up for moving on, heh-heh.

**Pretty Rita: **Oh dear God. Do you have even a _shred_ of humility? Modesty? _Class?_

**Murdoc: **Using fancy words doesn't make you more attractive, doll.

**Pretty Rita: **And using pet names doesn't make _you_ seem like less of a stuck-up ass, _darling._

**2D: **…no, c'mon, really, are you guys talking about me?

**Angelique: **Continuing with the interview, if you don't mind…your band has always been known for having very unique track names, but 'Manta Ray Gun' struck a few people as being rather odd. Care to explain?

**Murdoc: **Well, if you want odd, I'll give you-

**Noodle-Bot: **I advise you not to complete that remark.

**Pretty Rita: **Seconded. Me and 2D were the ones who came up with the name – we were watching this movie. Some sci-fi thing.

**2D: **Oh, yeah. The one with the aliens, right?

**Pretty Rita: **Erm, well, yeah, but don't they all have…? Ah, anyway, we were watching this sci-fi movie, and there were some ray guns.

**2D: **And I was like, "What does 'ray' mean, anyway?" So she said something about lines lasting, like, forever, and I was like, "Yeah, but what about manta rays? They don't go on forever, right?"

**Pretty Rita: **Which made me think of Wheel of Fortune – you know, like, the whole 'before and after' thing? So, like, the title's kinda like that. You have 'manta ray', and then you have 'ray gun.' And mashed together, that's 'Manta Ray Gun.'

**2D: **And then, a few days later, Murdoc was trying to figure out a name for the new song, and I remembered that conversation, and I was like, "That'd be such a cool song name." So, uh, that's kinda how it all came to be.

**Murdoc: **Half of the song titles come from 2D's psycho-babble, actually. Like, it sounds stupid when he word-vomits it up, but for some reason our fans really like how it sounds. So we kinda stuck with the theme.

**Angelique: **Which leads into the next question…how do you think the relationships within the band have changed over the years? Have you become closer, or do you think you're growing apart?

**Murdoc: **It's really kind of complicated. In the beginning, we were all just kind of reclusive. Like, we really didn't know one another much at all.

**2D: **Well, we did. We knew one another.

**Murdoc: **Well, you and the front of my car knew one another quite well, anyway. But like I was saying, we pretty much all avoided contact in the beginning. So there was really nowhere to go with that. But once we went from, like, garage band territory to actually doing some good, we got pretty close.

**2D: **There was the whole movie deal thing, though.

**Murdoc: **Yeah. We almost broke up the band with that one.

**2D: **You almost broke my goddamn neck, you mean.

**Murdoc: **Hey, but I didn't. But yeah, I mean, we spent all our time together. It was a major rarity to spend a whole day and not see at least _one _of your bandmates. Spending that much time with someone…you're just bound to end up hating them. That's just simple social science.

**2D: **Not forever, though, 'cause we got back together.

**Murdoc: **Yep. Pretty soon we all just kind of gravitated back together for the whole 'Demon Days' thing. And I think that's about the time when we realized that we actually were a lot closer than we thought. We were just too clouded up with anger to see it.

**2D: **I think that's really true, actually. We, like, we really did care, but we were all way too angry at, like, everything and everyone to see it.

**Pretty Rita: **And thus concludes the love story. Let's give the lovely couple a hand, folks.

**Murdoc: **What? No, we're not a couple! What would make you think that we're a couple? One time doesn't mean we're… _(trails off)_

**Pretty Rita: **…I was kidding?

**Murdoc**_ (blushing)_: I, uh, I knew that.

**Pretty Rita **_(smirking)_: What do you mean, 'one time'?

**2D: **Well, it wasn't really…like, it wasn't what you think it is, if that's what you're thinking.

**Murdoc: **You…shut up! Both of you! _All _of you! It doesn't mean anything!

**Angelique **_(nervously)_: Well, I'm afraid that's all we have time for today. Let's get a hand for the Gorillaz!

_Applause._

_The four of them leave the stage area. Pretty Rita has a self-assured smirk on her face; Murdoc and 2D look noticeably shaken._

_Noodle-Bot appears to be thinking what we are all thinking: What might become of this?_

_The door to the stage closes with a loud bang. _

**Final Thoughts: **I tried my best to update ASAP. The next chapter probably won't come this quick. I think I squeezed all of my creativity out of my body on this one XD

I don't own Ozzy Osbourne. (Obviously)

I also don't own most of the backstory contained in this chapter – that's mainly taken from _'Rise of the Ogre.'_

Thanks to my reviewers: **xxSay, SheWhoWonders, Marmalade Moon Mink, HoloXam, eronious, melianatara, goldenwarrior12, MsMojorisin, The Adversary, **and **LunaManzia.**


	18. But You Know I Know When It's A Dream

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

Murdoc changed in silence, not looking at the mirror, not looking at the floor, not looking at the other occupant of the room.

He was trying not to think, not to care, not to _breathe_ for fear of having to deal with…well, whatever_ this_ was. He was so confused by the situation; he didn't even know what the situation _was. _

See, Murdoc didn't take well to confusion. So he stuck with ignoring. Ignoring was easy, all it took was a splash of willpower and a lot of avoiding gazes. He could do ignoring.

Unfortunately, 2D didn't appear to have gotten the memo, because no sooner had Murdoc succeeded in ignoring him that he announced his presence in the room with a meek little, "Muds? Please talk to me."

Shit. 2D sounded all wounded and guilty and confused, probably thought Murdoc was mad at him or something. That hadn't been his intention; 2D hadn't done anything to him and he didn't deserve to feel like he was being shunned.

Seeing no other option but to reply, Murdoc sighed and turned to face his bandmate, "What do you want me to say?"

2D ran a hand through his hair, anxious, nervous, before replying, "I dunno. Just…what are we going to do about this?"

"I was personally kind of rooting for the idea of not doing _anything_ about it, but you seem to be against that one," Murdoc answered.

2D took a shaky breath, "We have to do _something._ I…you…" He trailed off, brushing his fingertips over his lips. It was probably just a reflex, but it made the muscles in Murdoc's stomach clench nonetheless.

"I know what happened, I was there," Murdoc muttered. "Well, what do you propose we do, then? Go public?"

"And say what?" 2D asked.

"That you're a fucking awesome kisser, and I found that out firsthand?" Murdoc offered.

2D flushed slightly, "Am I really?"

"Oh, Satan, yes," Murdoc impulsively replied, and 2D's blush darkened significantly.

"O-oh," 2D stammered, and then appeared to come to a realization. "So you…you liked kissing me?"

Murdoc snorted, "Brilliant powers of deduction you got there. I kissed you back, didn't I?"

2D nodded distractedly. "Well, I liked kissing you, too. A lot, actually." Murdoc didn't think the fair-skinned male could _turn_ a deeper shade of red, but by some miracle, he did.

"Okay, so we're both quite thoroughly into the whole snogging bit," Murdoc noted. "So, now that that's established, what are we supposed to do?"

"Well, I mean, if you like it, and I like it, then why not…keep doing it?" 2D offered.

Murdoc raised his eyebrows, "Seriously?" At 2D's sincere nod, he continued, "Well, I'm all for that, but the paparazzi are going to latch onto that like a magnet on a fridge."

Oh. Right. Paparazzi. That really was the exact thing they would jump on, too - oh, damn, he could only imagine the headlines. Explaining that to his parents, trying to defend himself in interviews…he'd never been good with his words to begin with, but he became thoroughly tongue-tied just trying to come up with something to say to that.

No, the paparazzi definitely couldn't get their hands on this, but…

"They can't latch onto it if they don't know," 2D offered.

Murdoc mused over that for a few moments. So he and 2D would continue this…whatever it was…and the paparazzi would stay in the dark over it. From the way he saw it, this had no consequences. It felt a bit like cheating the system, but that actually just kind of made it feel even _more_ beneficial – scheming, after all, was kind of his thing.

But there was one more thing. It made Murdoc's insides squirm just thinking about asking it, made him feel like an overemotional teenaged girl, but it would torture him to keep it in, so he might as well get it out into the open now, "So, does this mean we're, like, together?"

2D shrugged. "Not really. It's more like…like…I dunno, friends with benefits?"

Murdoc smirked. "Yeah, okay. Now _that_ is definitely something I can work with."

/

The two male members of the band were practically glowing when they came out of the dressing room, but their good mood was quickly ended when they went to see how the girls were doing and heard the distinct sound of a violent, murderous rampage going on behind the door.

The two exchanged glances before knocking on the door. Surprisingly, the android answered it, her face the epitome of calm, as the rampage continued on behind her. She pulled the door closed just in time to spare them from being hit with a flying wooden stool.

"What the…?" Murdoc stammered.

"She is experiencing enhanced feelings of rage," the cyborg replied, shrugging apathetically. "She cannot locate her prescribed medications, and is under the impression that an individual has stolen them."

Murdoc sighed, pressing his index finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose, "Why would you take her pills, Noodle? I didn't tell you to do that."

The android scowled, "I did not take them. I was not aware that she so much as owned such an object until it was pronounced missing."

His brow wrinkled in confusion, "Then who did? The only ones who could've possibly gotten in there are either band members or stagehands, and the only ones who know about those pills are standing right…"

He was cut off by the door swinging open and slamming into the wall with enough force to take the drywall right off. Pretty Rita's hair was coming loose from her ponytail, the free strands now plastered to her sweat-soaked forehead. Her teeth were clenched and her eyes flashed dangerously.

In a word, she looked like utter hell.

"Who took them?" she growled. "I want to know _right fucking now!"_

Murdoc, trying to keep his voice calm and even to avoid setting her off even more, insisted, "Pretty Rita, really, we have no…"

But, before he could finish, a highly guilty-looking 2D spoke up, "I-I just wanted to help. You shouldn't be taking those, a-and I wanted to…"

The anger drained from the young woman's face, leaving her with only betrayal and melancholy. 2D waited for her to call him a bastard or say she couldn't believe that she'd ever trusted him or that they were supposed to be friends or, well, to at least say _something, _but she just stared at him for a moment or two.

And then turned and silently, miserably walked away.

/

**Final Thoughts: **This chapter is so fluffy and sugary it could probably give you cavities, but we're nearing the end here so we have to deal with the emotional stuff at some point.

I do, however, feel like I kind of half-assed this one. I just really wanted to give you guys a new chapter for Xmas. But anyway, merry Xmas to those of you who celebrate, and for those who don't, merry whatever-you-celebrate!

Thanks to my reviewers, **xxSay, SheWhoWonders, Ice Cream Social **(aka **Morte Candy**), **CrowsGurl, HoloXam, Drauph, Noodle12, Chalcedony Rivers, melianatara, Tubular Fox, hi222222222, **and **yoko23.**


	19. I Think I Know I Mean A Yes

**Title: **The Fool on Melancholy Hill

**Rating: **T for language and mild sexual content

**Pairing: **2-D/Murdoc in the end

**Warnings: **Eventual slash, OC

**Disclaimer:** Guess what?I OWN THE GORILLAZ! (Tee-he. I kid.)

**Err…would it be "Claimer"?: **I do own Pretty Rita, her mother Rose-of-Sharon, her friend Morgan, Morgan's girlfriend Edie, and Wooder Mills, Massachusetts, which (fun fact!) is based off of the real-life city of Warren, Massachusetts.

/

2D slumped against the wall of an abandoned hallway. He wasn't sure where it led, but it, unlike the other ones backstage here, was completely empty, which was nice. He needed to sit somewhere, and he wasn't too keen on getting trampled by someone as they yelled at someone on a little hands-free phone clipped to their ear.

One of the florescent lights toward the end was flickering off every few minutes, only to instantly turn back on. Or, at least, so it seemed. He could be hallucinating it for all he knew. His mind wasn't exactly working properly at that moment.

He knew, somewhere deep down, that he ought to go find Pretty Rita and explain, explain that he didn't steal them because _he_ wanted them; he just wanted her to stop taking them. But he couldn't quite find the words. He could barely even remember why he took them in the first place.

He remembered going into her dressing room, wanting to talk to her after his impromptu make-out session with Murdoc, and not finding her there. He remembered seeing the android's clothing neatly folded on the counter, and Pretty Rita's clothes tossed unceremoniously on the ground in a crumpled heap. He remembered that bothering him, he remembered picking them up and folding them. He remembered the telltale sound of pills against cheap plastic. He remembered reaching into the pocket of her baggy shorts and taking out the canister. He remembered opening it even though he already knew what was inside, remembered looking at those all-too-familiar white-and-green capsules. He remembered hearing someone in the hallway and quickly clicking the lid back into place and attempting to put them into the pocket of his jeans, but they were too tight, and instead dropping them into his shirt pocket. He remembered dashing out of the room.

But he couldn't for the life of him remember why he'd pocketed them. He knew why he _would, _if he had the chance to do it again, but he couldn't remember why he _had._ One part of him told him that it was exactly why he'd always considered snatching them, to stop her from taking them. Another told him that he'd decided against this by the time he'd heard someone in the hall, and pocketed them out of fear of getting caught with a canister of painkillers in his hand.

And another wondered if maybe, just maybe, he had an underlying urge to feel that numbing high once again, like maybe that would make things feel the way they used to, back in the olden days, when it was just him and Murdoc and Russel and real, living, human Noodle.

The thought made him physically sick, but he had to admit, it was plausible.

And that, the fact that maybe he actually _had_ taken them out of selfish desire to get stoned, was exactly what was keeping him hiding in an abandoned hallway rather than trying to set things straight with his bandmate.

When did everything get so goddamn _confusing?_

/

Pretty Rita felt quite childish, curled up in a fetal position on a hotel bed, but she was in a bad enough mood with her supposed best friend snatching her pills, but now she had a headache and some killer nausea to boot, and fuck it, she felt like utter shit.

Noodle-Bot seemed to be having some kind of weird malfunction. Thus far, she'd unplugged two of the four lamps in the room, put the TV on game mode without putting a game in, turned the shower, sink, and fan on in the bathroom and then walked away, and was now going through the stations on the clock radio with a look of dire need on her face.

Ordinarily, Pretty Rita would chalk it up to her roommate being, well, an eccentric robotic teenaged girl, but right now it just annoyed the hell out of her.

When she really couldn't take it anymore, she finally snapped, "What the hell is _wrong_ with you?"

The android looked up as though she'd just realized that the other girl was in the room and replied matter-of-factly, "I am tuning the radio."

Pretty Rita shook her head, "Forget I asked."

She rolled back over and stared at the wall, and flinched when she felt a significant amount of weight at the edge of the bed. Glancing up, she saw that the cyborg was now sitting on the bed, tilting her head in confusion at her roommate.

"Yeah?" Pretty Rita asked, "Can I help you?"

"Are you still unhappy?" Noodle-Bot queried.

"Oh, no, I just curl up in bed at three in the afternoon on a Thursday when I'm in a _good _mood," Pretty Rita growled.

Noodle-Bot seemed to process this for a moment or two, and then, "I detect that you are engaging in sarcasm."

Despite her rather crappy mood, Pretty Rita had to at least smile at the cyborg's sheer naivety.

/

Half an hour later, Pretty Rita had finally fallen into a fitful, feverish sleep.

A knock came at the door. The cyborg tugged the door open, "Hello, Captive-2D."

2D flinched a bit at the title but didn't comment. "Uh, hey. Pretty Rita's here, right?"

Not opening the door another inch, the android replied, "Yes."

Shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, 2D asked, "So, can I talk to her?"

From inside the room, a sleepy voice called, "Who's there?"

Noodle-Bot turned and said something that 2D couldn't quite hear, and then Pretty Rita was there at the door, arms crossed, "What the hell do _you _want?"

"I just want to talk," 2D stated, trying to keep his voice even.

Pretty Rita laughed mirthfully, "Talk. You want to talk? That's rich."

2D insisted, "I was only trying to help."

"You think that makes it _better?_" Pretty Rita snapped. "If you wanted to get high or whatever, that'd be one thing. Yeah, I'd still be pissed, but I'd understand. But no, you felt some unadulterated need to _change_ me. I thought you were my _friend, _2D. I thought maybe I'd finally found someone who liked me for _me._ But no, you had to go and try to _change_ me. You can't have a druggie hanging around you, right? You have to go and _fix_ me."

"Pretty Rita…" 2D tried to interject.

But Pretty Rita cut him off, "Well guess what, 2D – I'm not fucking broken. I'm not a little doll that shattered on the ground and you have to glue back together. I'm a butt-ugly drug addict with an attitude problem, and I'm perfectly happy _just the way I am._"

2D finally snapped. He shoved the canister into her hand, "Well, fine, then! _Be_ happy! Be a damn druggie for the rest of your life! Go right the fuck ahead! I was only trying to help you, but clearly _that_ was a mistake!"

A hotel employee, a rather worried-looking young man, came running over, "Excuse me, is everything alright here? I've had several complaints from other guests of a very loud altercation going on outside this room."

"Everything's just fine," Pretty Rita replied stoically.

"And what about your friend?" the employee asked, glancing up at 2D, "Is everything okay with you?"

"I'm fine," 2D replied, "and I'm not her friend."

"You never were," Pretty Rita muttered, and then pulled her door closed, flopped down onto the large bed, and sobbed her eyes out.

/

The next morning, the four of them boarded the plane in silence. Noodle-Bot attempted to sit next to Murdoc, as had been the arrangement the first time, but Pretty Rita instantly called her over to sit next to her, giving a pointed glance at 2D.

2D, shaking his head, took the seat that the cyborg had passed up and ducked his head, causing his hair to fall forward and obscure his face.

Really, he just wanted to patch things up with the blonde, but he stubbornly refused to be the one to admit he was wrong. Sure, he probably shouldn't have taken the pills, but Pretty Rita could have at _least_ listened to his explanation.

Still, he was never one for fighting, especially like this, and the arguing was making him feel physically ill. He was rather pacifistic and much preferred things to be calm, but Pretty Rita seemed like she was actually _enjoying _the fighting. He supposed he should've seen that coming, giving the way she arguing with Murdoc almost constantly, but while their arguments had sort of a playful, childlike quality to them, the argument he'd gotten involved in just felt vicious and nasty.

"She'll come around," Murdoc muttered, noticing 2D's hangdog expression. "She doesn't like this any more than you do."

2D clearly disagreed, but he didn't say anything. He didn't need two arguments going on, so he'd been trying extra hard to stay on Murdoc's good side.

After a few hours of absolute silence, Murdoc tapped him on the shoulder and beckoned for him to follow. Curious, 2D did so, and they ended up in the curtained-off area where the stuff the flight attendants sold was stored. It was rather small, really only big enough for one person to come in, grab something, and leave, but 2D wasn't exactly objecting to the close contact.

Despite their decision of 'friends with benefits', they hadn't done anything since the dressing room incident, so 2D was caught off-guard when Murdoc suddenly pulled him close and kissed him. Pleasantly caught off-guard, of course, but still kind of startled.

When they separated for air, 2D asked, "What brought that on?"

Murdoc shrugged, "Looked like you needed some cheering up."

No arguing with that, 2D mused, and then they were kissing again. Murdoc was far from gentle, and 2D was pretty sure his lower lip would be badly bruised later on considering how much Murdoc seemed to enjoy pressing his sharp, pointed teeth against it, but once again, 2D wasn't exactly complaining. In fact, he was pretty much putty in Murdoc's hands by this time, and he had to keep reminding himself that they weren't exactly secluded in order to keep himself from verifying this fact audibly.

Murdoc had been tracing one of 2D's hipbones with his thumb, and happened to come across that long, jagged scar he'd been so preoccupied with that night in the hotel. Once again, he found himself wondering what, exactly, had caused that scar, and, unable to contain his curiosity, stopped exploring 2D's mouth with his tongue and asked about it.

2D, who was still on a horny kind of high, stammered out a semi-slurred, "W-what?"

Murdoc repeated, "This scar. Where'd you get it?"

2D blinked confusedly, "I fell off my bike when I was ten and ended up cutting it on one of the spokes. Why do you ask?"

Murdoc shook his head, "Never mind," and, quite relieved, pulled 2D closer by the beltloops and promptly resumed kissing him.

/

Around midnight, a scarce three hours after finally arriving back on Plastic Beach, a piercing warning bell went off.

Murdoc, startled awake, raced to the window. The skies didn't look very threatening, so it was unlikely to be a hurricane, which only left…

Oh, shit.

Swearing under his breath, he dashed into the lift and desperately jabbed the button with his thumb, praying to every entity out there that he wasn't already too late.

/

**Final Thoughts: **Long chapter is loooooong. XDD

I know I posted a chapter, like, just yesterday, but I didn't think you guys would mind another one :D

Anyway, I was quite unhappy with the last one, and my displeasure gave me enough energy to write this monster of a chapter. Consider it a surprise Xmas present, yeah? XDD

So, thanks to my reviewers for the last chapter, **Tubular Fox, love-is-free23, Noodle12, Drauph, CrowsGurl, Chalcedony Rivers, yoko23, melianatara, **and **HoloXam.**


End file.
